


WEB S TER 







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\k^i!xi- 'M 





IVEBSTER 



AN ODE 



O nostrum et decus et columeit! 



I 782-1852 



NEW YORK: 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 

1882, 






• Copyright, 1882, 
By William Cleaver Wilkinson. 



The Divisions. 



I. Challenge. 

II. Counter-Challenge. 

III. Beginnings. 

IV. The Foundation. 

V. The Law — Dartmouth Cask. 

VI. The Law— Munition of Public Trusts. 

VII. The Law — Nationality of Navigable Waters. 

VIII. The Law— a Christian State. 

IX. The Farmer. 

X. The Orator — Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill. 

XI. The Statesman— The Seer. 

XII. Defender of the Constitution — Reply to Hayne- 
Speech for the Union. 

XIII. ' Fixed like the Pole.' 

XIV. Appeal. 
XV. Conclusion. 



Notes. 



A— Private Morals. 

B — Public Virtue. 

C — Genius— Statesmanship — Oratory . 

D — Personal Traits. 

E — Religious Faith and Character. 



Ye see him truly, now : 
Their hour and power is past 

Who fain had shamed that brow 
It wears its crown at last. 

Hail him, his countrymen ! 
First of your foremost few, 

Given back to you again 
Yet greater than ye knew. 

Greater — for, good and great ; 
Not false, as they forswore ! 

He, who to save the State 
The State to please forbore. 

Well may the State he saved — 
Saved at such cost of blame, 

While still her mood he braved- 
Accord him, late, his fame ! 



II. 

So sang the poet, rendered bold and wise 
By the fine joy he found in being just ; 
Wise to foreknow what should be, therefore must, 

Bold to foredate it with creating eyes. 

But the State hearkening, jealous for her name, 

Heard that sharp challenge of her thanks and praise 
What did he to deserve such meed ? she says : 

Speak outj lone voice, and here rehearse his claim. 

O State, he said, for, lo, thou knowest it all. 
Might I be silent, and wouldst praise him thou ! 
The public hand should wreathe this public brow, 

And the great dead awaits his Country's call. 

Rash individual voice, speak what thou will, 
To hear is mine, the sovereign State replies : 
Me it behooves to wait and to be wise. 

With equal ear weighing the good, the ill. 

just and reverend State — the poet spake — 
Much musing lest ill heard so loud and long 
Have needs ere now full nigh forestalled the song, 

1 sing — for his, and thine, and mine own sake. 



III. 

At that not ancient date 

Before thou grewest great, 
He knew thee, and he loved thee well, O State ! 
For hearing oft thine early tale rehearsed, 

The boy was from the first 

In patriot wisdom versed. 

Him his heroic sire 

At evening by his fire 
Taught the pure passion of his own desire — 
Desire for thee that thou shouldst prosper long 

And be too wise and strong 

To do or suffer wroncj. 

Wide hopes he learned for thee, 

His country, soon to be 
Wide as his hopes outspread from sea to sea : 
Yet were his hopes as wise as they were wide, 

r^or conscience was as guide 

And prophet to his pride. 



Thence thee, O State, yet young. 

He with prophetic tongue 
Chid to sit still when sore with passion stung : 
His age ripe earlier than thy longer youth, 

With more experienced ruth, 

Knew to advise thee truth. 

True things for pleasant, he, 

With Roman firmness free 
From too much pity or awe, proposed to thee : 
Such virtue of clear counsel, in the blood 

Streams, an ennobling flood, 

From father wise and good. 

^'■"' tT"'"gs for pltasant.—VvMK pro Gratis was the raolto pic-fixed by Mr. Webster to a 
pamphlet edition of his seventli of March speech. 

lY. 

Bred in his father's simple school severe, 

Where sober godly fear 

And filial awe were dear, 

He learned that saving sense 

Of bond to duty, whence 
Flow to us still these streams of good immense. 

For not alone his fealty to the State 
Rescued us in those jjrcat 



to' 



Hinges of fear and fate, 
When, under skies of gloom, 
He, hearkening, knew the boom 
That burst at last in thunder peals of doom : 

His forty years of great example, too. 

Staunchly, in all men's view. 

To its own promise true, 

A fashion slowly wrought 

In us, unheeding taught. 
Kindred with him in ^ur habitual thought. 

The man was more than the great words he spoke 
This weighted every stroke 
Of speech that from him broke — 
That grave Websterian speech ! 
What sovereign touch and reach 

Empowered it from the man, to tone and teach ! 

So, mother State, our schooling once begun 

Under thy Washington 

Advanced with this thy son : 

His equal mood sedate, 

Self-governing, wise to wait, 
Reverent toward God, he shared to thee, O State ! 



T. 



[Previous to the Dartmouth College case, in 1818, not many im- 
portant constitutional questions had come before the Supreme Court, and 
since that time the great lawyer, who then broke upon them with so as- 
tonishing a blaze of learning and logic, has exerted a commanding in- 
fluence in shaping that system of constitutional law — almost a supplemen- 
tary constitution — which has contributed so much to our happiness and 
prosperity. — George S. Hillard. Dartmouth College, Webster's Alma 
Mater, had been made the subject of a change in its charter by act of the 
Legislature of the State of New Hampshire. The College resisted in the 
courts of the State, and was defeated. Appeal was taken to the Supreme 
Court of the United States, where the decision was reversed, the inviola- 
biHty of the charter being fully maintained. By universal consent, it was 
Webster's argument that assured the result.] 

He gladdened in the gladsome light 

Of jurisprudence, and that light he made 
More gladsome for thy children — such the might 
Wherewith the right, 
In wrong's despite, 
This conquering knight 
Bore off in rescue from the field of fight. 
Those bloodless jousts of law that drew his dreaded blade. 

His Dartmouth — thine, O State, and his — he found 

With ills beleaguered round. 
Helpless, of crafty foes the purposed prey. 

^^ The gladsome light of jurisprudence." — A phrase of Sir Edward 
Coke's several times quoted by Webster in his letters. 



The lists were set 
One famous final day, 
And lances met 
In tourney, and fair Dartmouth trembling lay, 

With scarce a breath, 
Dreading her doom, a trouble worse than death. 
But lo, a lance 
She sees advance, 
Sees a fresh lance ride up and plunge into the fray. 
To right and left the field gives way, 
Nor bides that shock to meet. 
He charges to the judges' seat ; 
Onset of argument. 
Volley of precedent. 
Tempest of eloquent 
Logic and learning blent, 
Deluging blows on blows, 
He overthrows his foes. 
Her foes are overthrown, 
Dartmouth will have her own. 
Cheer thee, O cherishing mother, in thy son, 
His task for thee is done, 
Thy battle fought and won. 
Beholders, you may go 



8 

That have seen this overthrow : 

Why do they linger so ? 
A sight that well might draw 

The wonder of the field, 
The victor knight they saw, 
That steel-clad knight, unclasp his dint-proof shield, 
Then — all his mighty heart uncovered there, 
His tender mighty heart to view laid bare, 
The filial in him to its depths astir — 
Go with his heart, as that a buckler were, 
Grieved that he could not bring a costlier, 
And standing by his mother cover her ! 
Such passion of great pity strikes an awe 
Even into breasts that sit to judge the law. 
From the august enthronement where he sate 
By Marshall's side, that pillar of the State, 



•^AnU standing by his mother cover her I 

When he had exhausted the resources of reasoning and logic, his 
mind passed naturally and simply into a strain of feeling not common to 
the place. Old recollections and early associations came over him, and 
the vision of his youth rose up. The genius of the institution where he 
was nurtured, seemed standing by his side, in weeds of mourning, with a 
countenance of sorrow. With suffused eyes and faltering voice, he broke 
into an unpremeditated strain of emotion, so strong and so deep, that all 
who heard him were borne along with it. Heart answered to heart as he 
spoke, and when he had ceased, the silence and tears of the impassive 
bench, as well as the excited audience, were a tribute to the truth and power 
of the feeling by which he had been inspired. — George S. Hillard. 



Story looks down with bland surprise, 
The friend's proud gladness beaming in his eyes : 
He drops the habitual pen, 
Nor takes it up again ; 
Each weighty word 
Before, he duly heard. 
But now transfixed he sees the speaker speak, 
While Spartan tears roll, one by one, down Marshall's cheek. 



Thus then it there befell 
That justice prospered well, 
And Dartmouth held her right 
By the valor of this knight, 
And this knight, O State, was he 
Whom, with unequal praise, I praise to thee. 



—Story looks down with bland surprise. 

I have often heard my revered and beloved friend, Judge Story, 
speak with great animation of the effect he produced upon the Court. 
"For the first hour," said he, "we listened with perfect astonishment; for 
the second hour with perfect dehght; and for the third hour, with perfect 
conviction." — George S. Hillard. 

— He drops the habitual pen. 

I had observed that Judge Story, at the opening of the case, had 
prepared himself, pen in hand, as if to take copious minutes. Hour after 
hour I saw him fixed in the same attitude, but, so far as I could perceive, 
with not a note on his paper. — Prof. C. A. Goodrich. 



lO 



YI. 



[jOS. HOPKINSON, ASSOCIATE COUNSEL, TO PRESIDENT BROWN. 

Dear Sir: — I have the pleasure of enclosing you a letter informing 
you of great matters. Our triumph in the college cause has been com- 
plete. Five judges, only six attending, concur not only in a decision in 
our favor, but in placing it upon principles broad and deep, and which se- 
cure corporations of this description from legislative despotism and party 
violence for the future. The Court goes all lengths with us, and whatever 
trouble these gentlemen may give us in future, in their great and pious 
zeal for the interests of learning, they cannot shake those principles which 
must and will restore Dartmouth College to its true and original owners. I 
would have an inscription over the door of your building : " Founded by 
Eleazar Wheelock, Re-founded by Daniel Webster." 

I wish you, sir, much happiness and success in promoting the use- 
fulness of the institution, and proving to the world that it has changed 
hands. Most respectfully. 

Your obedient servant, 
Washington, February 2, 1819. Jos. Hopkinson.] 



Implicit in her cause, O State, the cause 
Of many another of thy schools was won, 

And large the sequel was 
Beyond the sanguine guess of thy sagacious son. 

A thousand seats of learning freed 
Leapt at that pregnant stroke : 
Broken, they said, the intolerable yoke 

Meant to subdue us servile to the greed 
Of scramblers in the legislative hall — 
Each of us there a partisan foot-ball 

For rogues to kick and scuffle for at need — 



II 

That fatal forming yoke 

Smiting he broke, 
Once as with flail of oak 
Smiting, forever broke. 
Henceforth, they sang, O State, thy sacred trusts 
Of bountiful bestowment shall retain 
Their plighted dedication, to remain, 
Inviolable all, 
Secure alike from the rapacious lusts 

And from the whimsies raw 
Of demagogues and tamperers with the law, 
Mad with desire of gain 
And unchastised of awe. 

So sang the choir of colleges aloud 

That their rejoicing rang. 

And they moreover sang : 
Now every use and beauty be endowed 
With wealth to make them through long futures live. 
No more misgiving stint your giving ! Give, 
Ye sons and daughters of a noble State : 

Pledged are your gifts from fate. 

Nor long do answers wait : 
In golden streams with emulous haste outpoured, 

On every hand 



12 

Throughout the land, 
From broken coffers flows the escaping hoard. 

Science lifts up her voice 

In gladness, and rejoice 
Letters and Art, and Want and Woe the while 

Sweet Pity and Love beguile 
To dry their tears, be comforted and smile. 
A better alchemy transmuted gold 
Backward to blessings manifold ; 
And these, O State, thy gains through him, are they 
Greatly, whereby thou standest and art strong 
And beautiful, O State, this day, 

And yet to ages long. 

We trust, we pray, 
A theme of love and thanks, of eloquence and song. 



It is computed that, since Webster made his Dartmouth College 
argument, the sum of money given in private benefactions to found and 
endow colleges, schools, libraries, hospitals, and other institutions of public 
beneficence, has already grown, in this country, to an aggregate of not less 
than five hundred millions of dollars. All this immense interest is safe 
under the protection of the constitutional principles, established, against 
the prepossessions of the Supreme Court itself, by the logic and eloquence 
of Webster. 



13 
YIL 



[The Legislature of the State of New York had undertaken to secure 
to a certain company, for a term of years, the exclusive right of using 
steam to navigate the Hudson River, together with all the other tide- 
waters of the commonwealth. This monopoly provoked the Legislature 
of the State of New Jersey to retaliatory enactments, and serious complica- 
tions were threatened. In the Supreme Court of the United States, Web- 
ster's argument established permanently the doctrine that under the Con- 
stitution of the Union the commerce of the whole country was one, and 
that the jurisdiction of it belonged solely to the general government.] 



Thy commerce, too, that bond to bind thee one, 
He served at point of need 
When a pernicious seed 
Planted and fostered in it, had begun, 

Struggling towards air and sun, 
To promise fruit of brother feud and strife 
And menace to thy life. 
O State, bethink thee well, 
How, woven in words of law 
And specious to inspire obedient awe, 

A charm of false enchantment fell 
Once on that river wide of thy domain, 

A sinister spell. 
And broadcast sown on all his watery train. 

It did not stay the waters in their flow. 
The tide's great stress, the current, still were strong ; 



But to each cruising keel that clove along 
And asked that way to go, 
It used its lust to answer yes or no, 
And wantonly more often answered no. 
From harbor mouth to river head, 

From stream to stream and lake to lake. 
That evil spell was like to spread, 

And thy one web of commerce make 
A thousand tatters torn and shred. 
Then a wise master of the spell appeared, 
To solve its magic bond : 
He waved no wizard wand 
Reverse, nor counter incantation whispered weird : 
Simply the truth he spoke, 
With truth the charm of falsehood broke ; 
Daring thy law above the law invoke. 
That young unmeasured might from sleep once more he woke. 
Thenceforth, O State, from fountain head to sea 
Thy waters all to every keel were free. 
* Of many one,' 
. The motto for thy commerce from thy son ; 
As one of many thou 
Thyself in sequel now 
Art, and shalt be, while oceans roll and rivers run. 



15 

YIII. 

He taught thy court of law to hear 
Speech of a strain that there has since been mute, 
Clear ethic tone, or Christian, that went near 
To charge and change the place's atmosphere, 
And give it higher other attribute 
Than highest grave juridical dispute. 
With wonder and with awe 

Men saw 
The lawyer leave the law, 
Or raise it rather, while with easy ascent 
Rising to his sublimer argument 
He spoke to listening bench and bar 
And reverent popular ear that heard from far, 

Of Christ and of Christ's grace 
To children, little children, of our race. 

And conscience, that dread might within the breast, 

How thrice more dreadful made 

Seemed it, as he portrayed 
The goad inexorable that gave no rest, 
No pause, but ever urged and pressed 
The sleepless guilty soul, till he confessed. 

Of Christ and of Christ's grace. — A passage of Webster's argu- 
ment in the Girard will case was, with his permission, printed and circu- 
lated as a religious tract. 



i6 

Mute now these high forensic strains, 
Long mute, O State, but not their influence spent 
The memory and tradition yet remains 
Transmitted, safe among thy glorious gains 
Through him, thy son, a force and element 
To lawyers for a less unworthy aim. 
And spur to spurn ignoble ends with noble shame. 



IX. 

Nor served thee not that large bucolic life, 

So simply lived, and grandly — simply, though 
Report and rumor rife 
And general gaze that could not gaze its fill 

Made it a spectacle and show. 
Whereof men pleased themselves with fabling still. 
He could not stay or go, 

Could not at will 
Unbend in casual jest, in manly sport. 
But some, for love or thrift, would spread a wide reporl. 
The sun cannot be hid 
The heavens amid. 
The sun is seen, because he shines, 
And the sun shines, because he is the sun, 



17 

And, sun-like, Webster's lines 
Out into all the earth afar were run. 

Such was the man, and so 
His private life was public ; all he did, 

Or said, or was, was known. 
And nothing could be hid ; 
And nothing needed, for his ways were good, 
His most unguarded ways, and safely shown. 
His noble simple ways 
Supplied the speech of men with daily food 

For honest praise — 
Not idle, since to praise the good and fair 
Is to grow like through habit, unaware. 
Men liked to hear and tell 
How farmer's garb became the great man well 
And everywhere the farmer felt more space, 
An ampler air, a franker grace. 
Ennoble his vocation, with the thought. 
He is a farmer, Webster so has wrought. 
Somewhat more noble they already who 
Learn to think nobly of the work they do. 
So a diffusive lesson of far reach 
Thy Webster taught, not studious to teach, 
(As too he pleased, not studious to please) 



i8 

When but he slipped the customary weight 
Of pubHc duty, or the lawyer's toil, 
For intervals of ease 
Sought in returns to that estate 
From which he sprang, swart worker in the soil. 

His way in farming all men knew ; 
Way wide, forecasting, free, 

A liberal tilth that made the tiller poor. 
That huge Websterian plough what furrows drew ! 
Through fallows fattened from the barren sea. 
Yoked to that plough and matched for mighty size, 
What oxen moved ! — in progress equal, sure. 
Unconscious of resistance, as of force 
Not finite, elemental, like his own, 

Taking its way with unimpeded course. 
He loved to look into their meek brown eyes. 
That with a light of love half human shone 

Calmly on him from out the ample front. 
While, with a kind of mutual, wise, 

" That huge Websterian plough." — A very large plough made ex- 
pressly for Mr. Webster was one of the objects shown at the Centennial 
Exhibition in Philadelphia. 

'■'■ Through fallows fattened from the barren sea." — Mr. Webster fertil- 
ized his soil at Marshfield with sea-weed and fish taken from the sea. 

" JVhat oxen moi'ed,in progress equal, sure/" — The ox was Mr. Web 
star's particular favorite among domestic animals. He took great pride in 
possessing fine specimens of the best breeds. 



19 

Mute recognition of some kin, 
Superior to surprise, 
And schooled by immemorial wont, 
They seemed to say, We let him in, 
He is of us, he is, by natural dower. 
One in our brotherhood of great and peaceful power. 

So, when he came to die 

At Marshfield by the sea, 
And now the end is nigh, 
Up from the pleasant lea 
Move his dumb friends in solemn, slow, 
Funereal procession, and before 
Their master's door 
In melancholy file compassionately go ; 
He will be glad to see his trusty friends once more. 
Now let him look a look that shall suffice, 
Lo, let the dying man 
Take all the peace he can 
From those large tranquil brows and deep soft eyes. 
Rest it will be to him. 
Before his eyes grow dim, 
To bathe his aged eyes in one deep gaze 
Commingled with old days, 

^'^ Up from the pleasant lea." — Mr. Webster in Iiis last illness had 
his oxen driven up for him to view them from his window. 



20 

On faces of such friends sincere, 

With fondness brought from boyhood, deai , 

Farewell, a long look and the last, 
And these have turned and passed. 

Henceforth he will no more, 

As was his wont before, 

Step forth from yonder door 
To taste the freshness of the early dawn, 

The whiteness of the sky, 

The whitening stars on high, 

The dews yet white that lie 
Far spread in pearl upon the glimmering lawn : 

Never at evening go, 

Sole pacing to and fro. 

With musing step and slow. 
Beneath the cope of heaven set thick with stars. 

Considering by whose hand 

Those works, in wisdom planned, 

Were fashioned, and still stand 



" To taste the freshness of the early dawn." — Mr. Webster was an 
habitual early riser, and was in the habit of doing a day's work before most 
people breakfasted. His love of the morning was remarkable. 

" Considering by whose hand." — It is related of Mr. Webster that, 
standing once, on a starry night, under a favorite elm tree on his lawn at 
Marshfield, he was heard to repeat those sublime verses of the Eighth Psalm, 
" When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers," eta 



21 

Serenely fast and fair above these earthly jars. 

Never again. Forth he will soon be brought 
By neighbors that have loved him, having known, 

Plain farmers, with the farmer's natural thought 
And feeling, sympathetic to his own. 

All in a temperate air, a golden light. 
Rich with October, sad with afternoon, 

Fitly let him be laid, with rustic rite, 
To rest amid the ripened harvest boon. 
He loved the ocean's mighty murmur deep, 
And this shall lull him through his dreamless sleep. 
But those plain men will speak above his head, 
This is a lonesome world, and Webster dead ! 



Be sure, O State, that he. 
So great, so simple, wrought for thee. 
By only being what he could but be. 
But how for thee, with pain and travail dear 
He wrought, this yet some space I pray thee further hear. 



" Plain farmers" etc. — At Mr. Webster's own request he was bom 
to burial by some of the neighboring farmers, his Marshfield neighbors. 
The funeral occurred in the afternoon of a beautiful October day. 

This is a lonesome world, and Webster dead. — Mr. Curtis relates 
that a plainly dressed man in the funeral concourse was heard to say, as 
he leaned over the bier, " Daniel Webster, the world without you will seem 
lonesome." 



22 



X. 

Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill fast anchored stand, to stand for aye 
Part and parcel of thy mainland, as they stand secure to-day ; 
Part and parcel of thy story, wedded one with thee in fate. 
These fair names are sealed to glory fadeless as thine own, O State ! 
But as fast as Rock or Hill is rooted in thine earthy breast. 
And as fast as their brave memory clings and clasps thee East and West, 
Even so fast, forever blended, braid in braid, and strand with strand. 
With them Webster, name and fame, is bound in one unsundered band. 
Words are deeds, and in these places words were spoken by thy son, 
Dear to memory, dear and deathless, as the deeds that here were done. 

O the joy, the exultation, that by him had voice at length. 
Then when first the new-born nation guessed the greatness of its strength ! 
How like ocean to his bases by the breath of tempest stirred, 
Did those seas of upturned faces surge beneath his spoken word ! 

Young he was then, with his country, and he felt the wine of youth 
Leap along his bounding pulses in those morning paths of truth. 
The exultant young emotion in the multitudinous heart 
Of the people that to live for was his chosen patriot part. 
Seemed to find in his one bosom room capacious of it all, 
Where with flood and ebb like ocean it could heave in rise and fall. 



23 

Yet his words of cheer were sober, and he checked and chastened joy> 
Teaching us, by heed of duty, in the man to merge the boy. 

Then to see him, then to hear him, speaking for his country's cause. 
Roused, yet showing that unbounded might unroused within him was, 
All the inward man in motion, mind, and heart, and soul, and will, 
Meet the outward man to match it and its great desire fulfil — • 
Height elate, transfigured feature, majesty sublime with grace, 
Glorious in the awful beauty of Olympian form and face ; 
Voice that like the pealing clarion clear above the battle loud 
Pierced and thrilled the dinning noises of the mixed tumultuous crowd ; 
Thought that smote like bolted thunder, passion like the central fires 
Underneath the rocked volcano tossing to and fro its spires ; 
Slow imagination kindling, kindling slow, but flaming vast 
Over the wide tract of reason its far-beaming ray to cast ; 
Single words like stalwart warriors, of those mailed knights of old, 
Standing unsupported ready for the champion combat bold ; 
Words again in serried order, like an irresistible host 
Moving as one man in measure, with a tread to shake the coast — 
Eloquence rapt into action, action like a god, sublime — 
O the life, the light, the splendor, of that flush effulgent prime ! 

"Action like a god." — Webster's famous description of eloquence will be recalled. 
His closing words are: "It is action; noble, sublime, godlike action." 



24 



XI. 

And thine he was, O State, this matchless man ; 
The statesman still, whether In popular speech 
He pleased yet awed the great promiscuous throng 
And taught them that grave wisdom intermixed 
With memories and with hopes inspiring joy. 
Staid joy and wholesome, purged of vain conceit ; 
Or in discourse statelier and more august, 
Decent in his magnificent array, 
He stood to speak before the flower and choice 
Frequent of all the learning of the land ; 
Or in the senate, prime among his peers, 
Consulting and disputing matters high 
Of general concernment ; or in turn 
A counsellor of presidents, and wise 
Head of ambassadors to nations, firm 
And prudent opportunely to devise 
The equal mutual league, forestalling war, 
That knits kin states in peace and amity ; 
Nay, even in legal argument full oft, 

" Decent in his magnificent array. — Webster dressed for important 
public appearances with conspicuous care. He usually wore a coat of blue 
broadcloth, with gilt buttons, over a buff waistcoat, and also a buff cravat. 



25 

Defending private causes, his large thought, 
Prompt in presaging heed of consequence, 
Engaged him to a circumspection wide 
Of what might help or harm the commonwealth : 
Ever the statesman — this his statesmanship, 
To keep thee whole and one to be a state, — 
A state, and not that lamentable doom 
A hundred petty fragments of thyself. 
Weakling and warring, each the prey of each, 
And each and all the prey of foreign states. 
Whichever need or greed or chance might tempt 
To tamper here with some poor sovereignty, 
Belike republic called, the paltry prize 
Of liberators and dictators, each 
Mad to usurp his turn of brief misrule, 
And vex his time the victim of his lust — 
An endless line I seem to see them rise, 
Of ever worse succession — sequel sad. 
Unutterable, burlesque and irony 
Of that which was — of that which might have been. 
Much more, nay is, or is, we trust, to be. 
Since still thou art, O State, and still, though changed, 
Art whole and one, survivor of such ills ! 
That thou art such as now thou art, and not 



26 

Forever such as late thou wert too long, 
That land foreboded, rent with civil feuds, 
Nay, drenched, worse boding, with fraternal bloods- 
Thank him, thank Webster chief among thy sons, 
Thy sons so many noble, chiefly him. 
These all loved thee, but he more wisely well, 
Foreseeing farther, therefore differently. 
And differently devising for thy weal. 
Good patriots all alike they were, O State, 
And lovers true of Freedom, mete them praise, 
Their equal meed, full thanks and reverence due. 
Bestow, stint not, they stinted not for thee. 
Thou happy mother, rich in generous sons : 
To thank their generous sons is thrift for states. 
So always Webster taught and practiced ; praise 
To render, to receive, was his delight, 
Such the childlikeness of his rich warm heart. 
Late now, but praise him as of yore though late, — 
Praise fits this master in the art of praise. 
Adams and Jefferson, In fate and fame 

— Foreseeing farlh;y, therefore differently. 

" No, my friends, I shall not insult the majesty of that intellect 
with the thought that he believed there was danger to the Union. There 
was not any danger of a storm ; not a single cat's paw in the sky ; not a 
capful of bad weather between Cape Sable and the Lake of the Woods !" 
— Theodore Parker's Discourse of Webster. 



27 

Equalled by that conjunction in their death— 

With what majestic eulogy those twain 

He fixed as stars of a new Gemini 

In the clear upper sky with Washington, 

And with what joy rejoiced and bade rejoice 

To hail them there, celestial auspices 

Joined to the clustering constellated light 

Of the kind heavens above our country bent, 

Fresh beams to guide and cheer our walk beneath ! 

His praise was such that praise from him was fame. 

His father's fame, his brother's too, is this. 

That Daniel praised them. How, amid 

The jubilant acclamation loud that once 

Hailed him in sudden chorus round the world 

Defender of the Constitution, how 

Did that affectionate heart to kindred true 

Miss from the song the hushed voice of his brother ! 



— He fixed as stars of a new Ge>?tini. 

" Our own firmanent now shines brightly upon our path. Washing- 
ton is in the clear, upper sky. These other stars have now joined the 
American constellation ; they circle round their center, and the heavens 
beam with new light. Beneath this illumination let us walk the course of 
life, and at its close devoutly commend our beloved country, the common 
parent of all, to the Divine Benignity." — Webster's Eulogy on Adams and 
Jefferson. 

— Miss from the song the hushed voice of his brother. 

WJicn the land was ringing with praises of tlie reply to Hayne, 
Webster said to a friend, " I would rather have a word of approval from 
my brother Ezckicl than all this." 



28 

It was his childlike weakness to love praise, 
But love with praise he hungered for like food. 

But praise, they say, at last corrupted him 
Degenerate from his first simplicity. 
Touched him austere with pride and loftiness, 
(His very greatness making him less great,) 
Hindered those frugal manners which had graced 
Such greatness, and as pattern borne fair fruit — 
Not so, believe them not, they saw amiss : 
Miscalled it pride, his scorn of popular arts ; 
Hardness miscalled that sad sincerity 
Of wisdom weary to have taught in vain ; 
Miscalled it spendthrift and luxurious sloth, 
That open purse, that unconcern to thrive ; 
Light reck of due, unheeding hand and bond 
Miscalled that all-engaging negligence 
And habit of improvident delay. 
Born of upright intention sure of self. 
Joyful good will, and utter trust of friends. 
The wronged great, sad, sincere, and simple heart ! 
Nay, what if he herein had erred indeed. 
And those forsooth had gleaned a little flaw 
Of less than perfect manly In the man ? 
Sure, to such public virtue private fault 



29 

Not sordid, and so small, might be forgiven ! 

More to abhor, abhorrent more to truth. 
Lies foully ^t to that soft social heart 
And genial warmth of vital temperament. 
The tales they forge of reason, conscience, will — 
That reason, and that conscience, and that will ! — 
Through sensual appetite sold into shame : 
Shame that had been a tragedy of shame ! 
And shame that should, for me, abide not hid, 
Full shown, a blot of contrast boldly black 
Against the clear large splendor of his fame. 

Still, mother State, and though the hideous lie 
Were hideous truth, still, I would plead forgive, 
Blame, but forgive, nor cast the shadow wide. 
Making it one eclipse to darken all. 

But pity and forgiveness proudly spare ! 
Simple and pure, though faultless not, yet pure. 
Even to the end thy grave great son remained. 
Heed thou them not that bid thee wail him fallen ! 
No spirit fallen and reprobate and lost, 
Inhabiting a body ulcerate 

And sapped and foul with sins of sense, the man 
Who still in reft old age could overmatch. 



30 

Repeating them, those miracles of his prime, 

Twice wrought, O State, for thee, and twice postpone 

Thine imminent doom ; postpone, but not avert 

The inevitable ! Yet to postpone was much, 

And saved thee — from thy fate it could not — through 

Thy fate, beyond it, and despite. Full soon 

It came, the inexorable hour, and found 

Thee ready, not too ready, to receive 

The dreadful guest with meet return of grim 

Abrupt fierce salutation, eye to eye. 

— Wko yd in reft old age could overmatch. 
Repeating them, those miracles of his prime. 

" The effect of Mr. Webster's speech was amazing ; at first North 
em men abhorred it ; next they accepted it." 

" He never labored so hard before, and he had been a hard- working 
man. What speeches he made at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Albany, 
Buffalo, Syracuse, Annapolis ! What letters he wrote ! His intellect was 
never so active, nor gave such proofs of Herculean power." — Parker's 
Discourse of Daniel Webster. 



XII. 



[ Well do I recollect the occasion and the scene [the reply to 
Hayne]. It was truly what Wellington called the battle of Waterloo — a 
conflict of giants. I passed an hour and a half with Mr. Webster, at his 
request, the evening before this great effort, and he went over with me, 
from a very concise brief, the main topics of the speech which he had pre- 
pared for the following day. So calm and unimpassioned was the memo- 
randum — so entirely was he at ease himself, that I was tempted to think, 
absurdly enough, that he was not sufficiently aware of the magnitude of the 
occasion. But I soon perceived that his calmness was the repose of con- 



31 

scious power. He was not only at ease, but sportive and full of anecdote ; 
and, as he told the Senate playfully the next day, he slept soundly that 
night on the formidable assault of his gallant and accompUshed adversary. 
So the great Conde slept on the eve of the battle of Rocroi ; so Alexander 
slept on the eve of the battle of Arbela ; and so they awoke to deeds of 
immortal fame. As I saw him in the evening (if I may borrow an illus- 
tration from his favorite amusement), he was as unconcerned and as free of 
spirit as some here have often seen him, while floating in his fishing boat 
along a hazy shore, gently rocking on the tranquil tide, dropping his line 
here and there, with the varying fortune of the sport. The next morning 
he was like some mighty admiral, dark and terrible, casting the long shadow 
of his frowning tiers far over the sea that seemed to sink beneath him ; 
his broad pennant streaming at the main, the stars and stripes at the fore, the 
mizzen, and the peak, and bearing down like a tempest upon his antagon- 
ist with all his canvas strained to the wind and all his thunders roaring 
from his broadsides." — Edward Everett.] 



O the magnificent firm fi-ont of fight, 
Sportive and firm, as joy fill with the joy 
Of youth and strength presaging victory, 
Which he that earlier fateful day opposed, 
Single, to the whole phalanx of thy foes ! 

A gallant chieftain led them on, with gay 
Audacity, and festive challenge flung. 
To tempt the adversary. The august 
Repose with which that adversary took 
Unmoved the shock of onset haply seemed 
To them deceived, insensibility 
Or dull capitulation to defeat ; 
Not what it was, the tranquil rest of power 
At ease supping refreshment. Came betimes 



32 

Full undeceiving. Roused, at length, self-roused, 
He moved and muttered thunder. Musical 
And low that prelude, but it boded storm. 
Storm lingered and the lovely lightning played 
Some space gently and terribly its lithe 
And lambent beautiful wild play, while yet, 
Lulled in the cavernous bosom of its cloud, 
Dreamed the reluctant thunderbolt asleep. 
It woke and on the wings of lightning flew, 
Legion its name, and all the sky was fire. 
Revealed within his lightning, there he stood, 
The thunderer stood, and chose from out his store 
Of thunder, piled huge tiers, all moulds. 
Thunder alive, each bolt, and each awake 
Now, and uneasy, eager to be sped. 
From these, with leisurely celerity 
His missile messengers he chose, and charged 
Them to make haste. Already they had flown : 
Unhooded, from that dread right hand they flew, 
They fled, they fell, falcons of fire, and found 
Their quarry slain with terror ere with wound. 

At last one farewell long melodious roll 
Of boltless thunder mellow with remorse 
And pathos for his country, and he ceased : 



33 

Clear sky again and cheerful sun in heaven. 

Those foes discomfited were thine, O State, 
Thine, therefore his, and therefore overthrown. 
A fruitful fateful hour it was for thee, 
For him glorious, and well with glory crowned. 
Yet glory more he merited, and more 
Costly to him, nor gainful less to thee. 
When after, all the flush of youth retired, 
And that unanimous auxiliar hope 
And sympathy of his fellows which before 
Buoyed him elate upon the billowy breast 
Of popularity, a rising tide — 
This absent, and proposed to him the dire 
Necessity of seeming for a time. 
To some pure spirits intense, false to the plight 
And promise that he swore with younger lips 
To Freedom — yea, and it being moreover dark 
And doubtful whether all were not in vain 
To do or suffer for a cause foregone — 
He yet stood and withstood for thee, O State, 
O Union, and for thee forbore his fame : 

— O Union, and for thee fo)-bore his fame. 

Theodore Parker, a bitterly hostile critic of Webster, has it in his 
discourse on the statesman's death that — 

"On the morning of his fatal speech [that of the seventh of March, 
1850, on the Compromise Measures] he told a brother Senator, ' I have my 
doubts that the speech I am going to make will ruin me.' " 



34 

For thee, O Union, stood, nor less for thee, 
O Freedom, since thou Freedom wast 
By union, and not otherwise, to thrive. 

So then this strong vicarious spirit strove, 
Not one brief hour of uttermost agony, 
Dreadful and swift, but days, and weeks, and months. 
Of inexhaustible patience and slow strength. 
For us, and greatly stood, until he died 
But did not fall. Unfallen he died, nor fell 
Dying, nor yet being dead was fallen but stood. 
Throughout, and to the end, and on beyond 
The end, and endlessly, he stood — and held 
These standing both. Union with Liberty, 
Inseparably one, upright and safe : 
The toiling elements tugged at him in vain. 

— So then this strong vicanous spirit strove 

Rev. Dr. Nehemiah Adams subjoins to a published funeral discourse 
of his on Webster, a note in which the following words of Webster to 
some minister (not named) are, on that minister's own authority, given as 
having been spoken in private intercourse, soon after the delivery of the 
speech of the seventh of March : " It seemed to me at the time that the 
country demanded a human victim, and I saw no reason why the victim 
should not be myself" " Mr. Webster's manner evinced such sincerity 
and deep patriotic disinterestedness that he [the minister] was moved to 
tears, which do not cease to start at every recollection of the interview." 



35 



XIII. 

Fixed, like the pole, 
He stood, whatever moved, 

As if, though sole. 
The shock to take, and break, it him behooved. 

The shock he broke ; 
The multitudinous main 

Its waves awoke, 
Woke all its waves, and stormed the rock in vain. 

To join the waves, 
The mustering winds went forth 

From all their caves, 
Against him. West and East and South and North. 

The spinning void 
Of whirlwind humming by 

In its cycloid. 
Paused, on that seated strength its strength to try. 

And the floods came : 
Deep called to deep aloud 

Through the great frame 
Of nature, 'twixt the billow and the cloud. 



36 

And deluge rolled, 
From pole to pole one tide, 

Waste as of old, 
And weltering shouldered huge against his side. 

The thunderbolt. 
As when that Titan world 

Rose in revolt, 
Hot through the kindling air amain was hurled ; 

And, whence it slept. 
Like a swift sword unsheathed. 

The lightning leapt. 
And round him its fierce arms of flame enwreathed. 

The rending throes 
Of earthquake, to and fro, 

From their repose 
Rocked the perpetual hills, or laid them low. 

And still he stood — 
For the vexed planet still, 

Created good. 
Was whole, and held her course, and had her will. 

-And still he stood — For the vexed planet still — 

" No Storm not of force to burst the orb can overturn it." — Webstep, 



Z1 

Around him cloud, 
Pale spectre of spent storm, 

Clung, like a shroud, 
And veiled awhile the inviolable form. 

But umpire Time, 
Serenely wise and just, 

With slow, sublime, 
Unalterable decision and august. 

Cleansed this away. 
And lo ! the glorious front. 

In candid day, 
Resumed, with solemn joy, its ancient wont. 

On the grave face 
Pain suffered and subdued 

Had worn the trace 
Of woman's passion and man's fortitude. 

But other years. 
In lengthening pilgrim train, 

Came, and with tears 
Wept out of thankful and remorseful pain, 



3S 

Touched each deep score 
That furrowed cheek or brow, 

Forevermore 
To majesty become pathetic now. 

And men said, See ! 
This thunder-blasted form, 

For you and me 
Fain once to take the fury of the storm — 

Is it not fair ? 
Come, cluster round the feet, 

Doubt not but there 
Still to the mighty heart our praise is sweet 



39 



XIY. 

Forgive, O State, 
Forgive me, that I dare anticipate 
That which shall be ; 
Clearly I see 
Emerge the crescent of his fame from its eclipse ; 
The dawn is here. 
And how shall I refrain my lips 
From singing of the sunrise seen so near, 

So near, so dear? 
He knew eventual wisdom with thee lay, 

And, trusting thee with a prophetic trust. 
Well brooked to hear the hounds of faction bay 

Confusing thee against him to their lust. 
He loved thee, State, with self-postponing love : 
At length through him at leisure to be just. 
Pronounce, I pray, 

To-day, 
Thy late 'Well done,' 
Well won. 
Upon thy son, — 
Late, but full-voiced and penitent, above 
His dust. 



40 



XY. 

Who boldly had begun, thus softly ceased : 
Meek with his joy to deem the dawn increased. 



NOTES 



NOTES. 



To express some present absorbing sentiment of the popular mind 
and heart, is comparatively an easy task for the poet. Such is, perhaps, the 
poet's true and proper business. The task here undertaken is different. 
This is an attempt to revive a sentiment gone far toward being extinguished 
in the public mind. The attempt will not succeed, and it ought not to, 
unless the accusations against the uprightness of Webster's character can be 
shown to be in the main unfounded. With this topic, therefore, it is pro- 
posed here to deal first, and to deal frankly and fearlessly. Truth is still 
dearer than any man's personal fame, and truth is, more than vindication, 
the object of the present writer. Readers will certainly approve the plan 
thus indicated of postponing appeal to their genial sympathies, until after 
their sense of justice shall have been satisfied. For this reason, the display 
of those sweet and winning qualities in Webster, that distinguished him 
not less than did his mass and power, will rightly yield precedence to the 
question, Did the man deserve our love and reverence by his truth and 
goodness? That he did his country great service, everybody admits. 
That his confessed great usefulness to his country was heavily deducted 
from by dereliction at last, many believe, and more suppose. This is an 
important point for consideration, but not less important, and properly in 
men's minds prior, is the question. Was this public merit of Webster, 
whether subject or not to serious deductions, accompanied by personal 
and private misconduct on his part, such as fairly to cancel our debt of 
affectionate esteem for his character ? 

That readers may feel at the start how little is left through ignorance 
undisclosed, or covered up through fear, the evil things alleged against 
Webster are here to be presented in the very words of his bitterest accus 
ers. The public fault, that is the great public fault, which, according to 
his opponents, he committed, was due, they think, to moral infirmity in the 
man. It will, therefore, not be necessary, as it would be very difficult, to 
keep separate the public from the private arraignment of his character. 
The reader is confronted at once with some of the most powerful expres- 
sions of opinion and feeling hostile to the good fame of Webster. Some 
of these are, no doubt, here presented in the only form in which they are 
now accessible to the public. They are none the less the fountain, though 
hidden from sight, from which the current of public sentiment as to Web- 
ster, originally received its yet unwasted impregnation. 



44 



A 



The talcs they forge of reason, conscience, will — 
That reason, and that conscience, and that xoill ! — 
Through senstial appetite sold into shame — xi. 

In a higlier circle ol\\it professional success often tempts a young man of aspiring 
mind to seek to ally himself with those who love not God and care nothing for his cause. 

Many years ago a young lawyer, who afterwards became a Senator of the United 
States, was a member of an obscure church in the mountains of New Hampshire. So 
long as he remained nestled among the hills he was faithful to the religion of his fathers. 
But his professional prospects required him to migrate to the metropolis of New England 
There he found himself in a new world. The faith of his childhood was unpopular 
Very largely it was the faith of the poor and the middling classes of society. The wealth, 
the culture, the social rank, the professional prestige of the community, was compacted 
in almost solid phalanx against it. Prejudice against it ran so high that the churches in 
which it was preached were branded with opprobrious nicknames. Their worshippers 
were hustled in the street. 

It was a severe temptation to the youthful and brilliant lawyer, who may have felt 
that he had the making of the first senator of the age in his brain The necessities of 
his professional future — yes, of his professional usefulness — seemed to compel him to 
abandon the old faith of the Pilgrims, and to seek association with the magnates of the 
bar and the bench by casting in his lot with those who denied Christ. He fell before the 
temptation. From that time to his death his religious faith, though probably not theo- 
retically changed, was clouded over and practically buried under his professional alli- 
ances. His veracity, his honesty, liis temperance, his chastity — all were submerged in his 
intense and overmastering worldliness before he died. — Professor Austin Phelps, D. D. 



The foregoing allusion to Daniel Webster was first published in a 
weekly newspaper. The series of papers in the course of which it occurred 
has since been printed in a volume — the allusion remaining unchanged. 
The first publication provoked the following notice in a periodical print : 

Here is a very grave charge brought against the good name of a 
dead man. "Webster," Prof. Phelps says, " fell before the temptation." 
The assertion is unequivocal and unquaHfied. The "temptation" was to 
"seek association with the magnates of the bar and the bench by casting 
in his lot with those who denied Christ." 



45 

This must mean that Webster, who had previously been a member 
of a Trinitarian Congregational Church, joined or, at least, attended a Uni- 
tarian Congregational Church when he removed to Boston. " Casting in 
his lot with those who denied Christ," is a vague phrase; but it can hardly 
mean anything else than what I have suggested. Mere mingling in social 
and professional relations with persons not Christian cannot be intended. 
For there is nothing to show that Webster deliberately chose worse worldly 
companionship in Boston than he had done in Portsmouth. We are 
forced, therefore, to conclude that Prof Phelps means to be understood 
that Webster, in connecting himself with the Brattle-street church, "cast 
in his lot with those who denied Christ," and that he did this in order to 
advance his personal fortunes. With the questionable propriety of the 
severe impHcation thus conveyed against the Church itself, over which the 
fervent young Buckminster, of still vivid and beloved memory, had but re- 
cently been pastor, let us now have nothing to do. The motive imputed 
to Webster is our present concern. How does Prof Phelps know that 
Webster's /«tf/2V^ was thus sordid? Is it because there is no other motive 
supposable? It is true, no doubt, as Prof Phelps presumes, that Webster 
was never other than Trinitarian "theoretically." It may be true, too, 
that Webster did wrong to join the Brattle-street Church. But do these 
facts, admitted, prove that, in doing so, Webster " dehberately abandoned" 
his faith, and, furthermore, that he abandoned it for the sake of bettering 
his worldly prospects ? Has Webster ever anywhere acknowledged that 
his motive was what Prof Phelps alleges it to be ? I repeat the question: 
How does Prof Phelps know that Webster's motive was such? And if he 
does not know it, how does he justify the homiletic license under which he 
unreservedly asserts it to be such ? 

Now, a pertinent fact or two. First, the memorable controversy 
between Dr. Worcester for Trinitarianism and Dr. Channing for Unitarian- 
ism, which resulted at last in the separation of the two bodies of believers, 
previously mingled in the same churches, did not begin till about the date 
at which Webster removed to Boston — namely, 1816. Secondly, Webster, 
at Portsmouth, had been very intimate in the family of the Buckminsters. 
Buckminster, senior, pastor in Portsmouth, was an ardent Trinitarian, but 
he went to Boston and preached the sermon for his son's ordination as 
Unitarian pastor over a church mainly Unitarian — namely, this same Brat- 
tle-street Church. This son had been Webster's teacher at Exeter, and, 
as Webster himself testifies, had been very kind to him there. Thirdly, 
exchanges of pulpits between Orthodox and Unitarian ministers were com- 
mon. Fourthly, the two classes of believers were still, with few exceptions, 
on terms of mutual Christian fellowship, as individuals and as societies. In 
short, the lines of demarcation had not yet been sliarjily drawn between 
orthodox and heterodox. In this state of things, is it not conceivable that 
Webster was attracted by personal sympathies as much as by selfish am- 
bition in going to Brattle-street? Did Buckminster, senior, "fall before 



46 

the temptation " to seek his own worldly advantage in preaching his son's 
ordination sermon? If not, how is it certain that Webster "fell" before 
such a " temptation " in joining the congregation to which that son, famil- 
iarly known and affectionately regarded by him, had lately ministered ? If 
Prof Phelps has private information about the interior state of Webster's 
heart, as to this matter which compels him to his conclusion, against which 
we feel assured must be the charitable instincts of his nature, let him be 
just to himself, while remaining severely just to the dead man's memory, 
and produce his information. 

Meanwhile, here is something related by Peter Harvey in his " Rem- 
iniscences " : 

" I said : ' When you [Mr. Webster] came to Boston you went to 
the Unitarian Church and they now speak of you as a Unitarian.' ' I am 
not a Unitarian,' he replied. * * * 'When I came to Boston many 
of my friends went to Brattle-street Church. Buckminster was its minister, 
one of whose brothers was my preceptor at Exeter. Then the divisions 
were not so marked as now. Dr. Codman would preach in Brattle-street 
Church and Dr. Little at the Old South. Afterward the division took 
place; but I never felt it worth while to change. I was not here a great 
deal; and at Marshfield I always attended the Orthodox Church, which I 
continue to do.' " 

There are evidently some inaccuracies in this passage. I do not 
quote it as conclusive historical evidence ; but it is probably trustworthy as 
to the general state of the facts. 

I am not now defending Webster. I am adducing an illustration of 
what seems to me improper homiletic license. I repeat once more : How 
does Prof Phelps know what he affirms ? It is, observe, a matter of mo- 
tive; and, in the nature of things, how could he know what he affirms? 
And if he does not know it, how does he justify himself in using a dead 
man's reputation for illustrative purposes in this injurious way ? 

And what shall we say of the homiletic license exemplified in the 
sweeping sentence of condemnation with which the author of " The Still 
Hour " brings his reference to Daniel Webster near its close ? 

" His veracity, his honesty, his temperance, his chastity — all were 
submerged in his intense and overmastering worldliness before he died." 

If this merciless indictment, with its four calmly discriminated 
counts, is true, how does Prof Phelps know it is true ? And, if he does 
not know it is true, how does he justify himself in bringing the indict- 
ment? In his own sober judgment, will the elastic principle of homiletic 
license stretch wide enough fairly to cover the case? 

If Prof Phelps is right in his facts, then those who knew Webster 
best must have got their " veracity," too, somehow strangely submerged, for 
their testimony is very different. How is it? Was Prof. Phelps stating 
ascertained facts, or practicing homiletic license ? 



47 

The historical setting which, in a few graphic statements, Prof. 
Phelps gives to Webster's conduct, besides being out of harmony with 
contemporaneous accounts, bears inseparable internal evidence of being 
too freely made up. He says the "poor" and "middling" classes were on 
one side, and the "wealth," the "culture," the "social rank," the "profes- 
sional prestige " on the other. He then says that " worshippers " of the 
former sort were "hustled in the street." This, fairly taken in connection 
with its context, would seem to imply that wealthy, cultivated, socially dis- 
tinguished and professionally distinguished Bostonians "hustled" their in- 
feriors "in the street." It certainly suggests a most improbable picture. I 
trust, at least, that the "magnates of the bar and the bench" did not often 
engage in these reprehensible street demonstrations. 

Again, Prof Phelps says that Webster was "worthy of all the 
dignities he received, and more." This is said without qualification. But 
supply the qualification that he was speaking from a "worldly" point of 
view, and then conceive a homilist declaring a man described by him as 
having his "veracity," his "honesty," his "temperance," his "chastity," 
"all" of them "submerged," to be " worthy" of being Senator of the United 
States, Secretary of State, "and more." "Submerged" is a strong word. 
When a man's "veracity" is "submerged," what is the man but a "liar?"' 
When a man's "honesty" is "submerged," what is he but a "swmdler?" 
When his "temperance" is "submerged," what is he but a "sot?" 
When his " chastity," what but a "lecher?" A "liar," a "swindler," a 
" sot," a " lecher," all co-existing in one and the same individual, and that 
individual pronounced by a homilist " worthy " of many exalted dignities, 
" and more ! " This assuredly is remarkable, if true. Who says it being 
considered, it is scarcely less remarkable if false. 

Of course, I do not call in question the perfect uprightness of Prof. 
Phelps's motive in thus using his illustrious instance to point his important 
moral. I simply suppose that he has too easily taken up unwarranted and 
calumnious rumor as the unquestionable truth of history, and, intent on 
the moral, been not careful enough concerning the instance. 

And now, if the distinguished writer be able to produce demonstra- 
tion of his allegations against Webster as to motive and as to character, 
then he will at the same time have cleared himself, and have gone far 
toward converting his critic into a culprit, in place of the censor that he 
has here very unwiUingly undertaken to be. In the very act of warning 
against homiletic license, I shall appear to have been myself doing some- 
thing not very unlike practicing homiletic license. With open eyes and 
with a full sense of the grave responsibility involved, I cheerfully incur my 
risk. 



48 

[A friend has been at the pains to present, in the following brief 
and effective form, the whole case in accusation and in vindication 
of Webster's personal character. The accusation, it will be seen, 
has been made to furnish the vindication. Readers will enjoy the 
neat manner in which the accuser is displayed performing her uncon- 
scious hari-kari.] 

Mr. Webster's Purity — The Original Accusation — The Mo- 
tive — AND the Character of the Evidence. 

[Extracts from an article by Mrs. Jane G. Swisshelm, in the Independent, 

April II, 1878.] 

" In the winter of '49 and '50 I was in Washington, as a corre- 
spondent of the New York Tribune and the Pittsburg Saturday Visitor. 
Mr. Webster had then made his Marshfield speech, and thrown the whole 
weight of his influence into the scale against the slave. I, as the ad- 
vocate of the oppressed, was brought face to face with that influence, 
and it became my imperative duty to make it as small as pos- 
sible. 

" I was using my eyes and ears, watching for opportuni- 
ties, and hoping for some way by which the unholy alliance of the 
Webster Whigs and the Slave Power might be brought to naught. 

"I SAW NO speck of-light UNTIL one day, in a conversation 
with Mrs. Southworth on the exceeding depravity of members of Con- 
gress, she said : ' Oh! you need not say anything about Southern men. 
Look at your own Daniel Webster.' 

" He was not viy Daniel Webster; but he was of the North, and 
among the masses of the people in the Free States was regarded as 

A MODEL OF MORALITY. In ALL THE ROUGH-AND-TUMBLE OF POLITI- 
CAL LIFE, I HAD NEVER HEARD HIS PRIVATE CHARACTER ASSAILED ; 

and the distinct statements which followed that first exclamation were 
so STARTLING that it was some time before I discerned their public 

IMPORTANCE. 

" When i began to see my way, I went to Joshua R. Giddings, 
Emanuel Bailey, Dr. Snodgrass, George W. Julian and his wife, and 
several other persons, for the denial or confirmation of Mrs. South- 
worth's account, and found that she had only told a small part of 

the truth. 

* * * * * * 

" From Maine to Georgia, the Whig press denounced and vili- 
fied me, and, by a strange fatality, copied my article entire. There 
were only about one hundred words in it, but it told the story. * * * 
In less than three months some one got up a conundrum : ' Why is 
Daniel Webster like Sisera.? Because he was killed by a woman.' 
This, too, went the rounds of the press ; and when the Free Democratic 



49 

Party was organized, in Pittsburg, the temporary chairman came down 
from the platform to be introduced to me, and his first words were, as 
he warmly grasped my hand : ' I want to take the hand of the woman 
who killed Daniel Webster.' When the permanent organization of the 
Convention was effected, Henry Wilson was placed in the chair ; and 
he too left it and came into the audience, to be introduced and con- 
gratulate me on having killed Daniel Webster. 

" Now, if my statements Jiad not been true, making them must have 
crushed me, [!j and they could not have received the general endorse- 
itient [!] which came with the sober second thought." 

The above — to use its writer's phrase — is not much more than a 
hundred words, but it tells the story : the whole story : all that could 
be told in evidence against Mr. Webster's private morals, if a volume 
were devoted to the subsequent iterations and amplifications of the ob- 
scene gossip, which, of itself, had never crept out of its native sewers. 
Mrs. Swisshelm and her disciples are simply a class of persons who are 
competent to believe that a long and conspicuous life generally regard- 
ed as " a model of morality" could be at the same time so openly and 
shamelessly profligate as with its filthiness to taint the very breath of 
rumor, no specific incident or testimony being known or needed ! 
They are those who accept — from motives above confessed, or possibly 
from motives unconscious — who resolutely accept salacious innuendoes 
bandied about in circles that never knew the shadow of Daniel Web- 
ster, in preference to his actual estimation in that pure and dignified 
society where he constantly lived and moved throughout his life. That 
such a preference is natural to multitudes of minds, is the patent ex- 
planation of what might otherwise be a great mystery; namely, that the 
most preposterous calumnies often attain proverbial currency. 

But pity and forgiveness proudly spare. 

T have known him in private and domestic life. During the last 
twenty-five years I have received many letters from him, some of which I 
yet retain, and some have been destroyed at his request. I have had the 
pleasure of meeting him often in private circles and at the festive board, 
where some of our sessions were not short ; but neither in his letters or 
his conversation have I ever known him to express an impure thought, 
an immoral sentiment, or use profane language. Neither in writing nor 
in conversation have I ever known him to assail any man. No man, in 
my hearing, was ever slandered or spoken ill of by Daniel Webster. 
Never in my life have I known a man whose conversation was uniformly 
so unexceptionable in tone and edifying in character. — Hiram Ketchum. 



50 

MR. Webster's temperance. 
Of all the popular anecdotes which represent Mr. Webster as in- 
toxicated on public occasions, sometimes talking idiotically and some- 
times making the most masterly orations under the same alleged 
influence, there is not one that has not been sifted and refuted, authori- 
tatively and publicly, over and over again, nor one which, for all this, 
has relaxed in any degree its hold on the perverse popular fancy. The 
following statements of Charles A. Stetson, Esq., the veteran host 
of the Astor House, are appended to show how such anecdotes have 
originated. The extracts are from a speech made by Mr. Stetson at a 
meeting of Mr. Webster's personal friends at the Astor House on the 
72d anniversary of his birth. This was but about two years after Mr. 
Webster's death. 

" For seventeen years I had uncommon facilities for seeing Mr. 
Webster and knowing much about him, and I presume I shall not be 
charged with vanity when I say that no man spent more hours quietly 
and socially with him than I did, when he was in New York. I wish 
to testify, from a constant study of him, against that wretched slander 
that he was intemperate. I can before my God say that I never saw 
him intoxicated. 

"Mr. Webster was liable to appear at physical disadvantage. 
As he would, in respite of thought, grow vigorous in manner and ac- 
tion, so would his body cower and grow feeble under mental excite- 
ment. To illustrate : He asked me, in 1839, to go with him to Sara- 
toga, where he was expected to make a speech. * * * We arrived at 
Saratoga and sojourned there several days before the Convention took 
place. We went upon the staging that had been erected. After being 
there some five or six minutes the people got up in such numbers that 
it broke down and we all tumbled to the ground together. The sub- 
stitute was a long red pedlar-wagon with sloping sides and a top about 
eight inches wide. Mr. President King, of Columbia College, then 
connected with the American, was upon one end of it and I upon the 
other. Between us stood Mr. Webster, without proper support for his 
toes or heels, for two hours and forty minutes, and there he made a 
speech. It was a great speech, and he exerted himself much to make 
it. When he had finished I jumped off the wagon and, with the assis- 
tance of Dr. Barstow, managed to take him down. He was so weak 
that he put his knee to the step and fairly crept fnto the carriage. 
When we all got in he said, ' Well, do you think they will say that I 
have drunk too much to-day .? ' 'I shouldn't be much surprised if they 
did,' 1 answered; ' I could not hold you up as we came along.' We 
went immediately to the house and into the parlor. I said to him. 



51 

You had better take a little brandy and water.' He would not take 
any, however. Directly the doctor came along and said he had better 
take some. Then he took a very little, went and lay down, fell 
asleep, and after a brief nap awoke perfectly refreshed. Shortly after 
this I went into the common assembly-room of the hotel, and while 
passing through the hall I heard a person say, ' What a fine speech ! 
But wasn't he bloody tight ! ' 

"After he had received that mortal wound in Marshfield, by fall- 
ing out of his wagon, he came on here to make an address before the 
Historical Society; and there I heard of respectable gentlemen having 
stated that he was intoxicated. A fouler slander never was uttered by 
mortal man ! I walked down with Mr. Webster over that miserably 
constructed staircase. He walked as straight as an engineer could, 
and as true to a line. He was apparently dull and uncomfortable, 
thougli expressing himself clearly to me, ' I wish I had not got to go 
through this.' And, in this mood, he might probably have inclined his 
head ; he might have looked as if he was tired or sleepy, and I should 
not have been surprised if he was ; but he was not drunk, nor under 
the influence of wine or liquor of any kind. 

" He was with us of the New England Society in 1852. He 
took the whole journey [from Washington] without sleep, and had 
passed the previous night in preparation, which was hard work for a 
man nearly seventy years old, and it was not fair to charge him with 
being tipsy, after he had been busy and riding twenty-four hours with- 
out sleep and was so excessively fatigued. He sat with his hand over 
his eyes, perhaps thinking over what he was about to say. He did not 
seem to be trying to get up a reputation for being tipsy. He made a 
speech. Most of us heard it, and it sounded very little like the speech 
of a drunken man ; yet on that occasion I heard more than twenty per- 
sons say that he was intoxicated, when I knew that he got up from the 
table as sober a man as could be in the world." 

Question : "How was it at Rochester.'" 

Mr. Stetson : " I thank you. No better illustration is needed. 
He went from this house feeble. He was sick during the journey, and 
unwell when he went to the festival to make a speech. The gentleman 
who went from the city with him was too modest, and therefore neg- 
lected his duty, which was to sit by Mr. Webster and be sure that he 
alone gave him to drink. Under the excitement of speaking he asked 
for something to moisten his lips, when whiskey was poured into his tum- 
bler and thence into his stomach. Its effect was instantaneous. On 
his return I asked him how he enjoyed his visit. He said, ' Admirably. 
Everything went well, except that some one gave me strong drink 
while speaking, which excited me very much. I hope there was no bad 
intention.' He was angry, as well as grieved." 



52 

A responsible contributor to the Independent, under the head- 
ing "The True Story of a Famous Speech," thus disposes of the most 
notable of the alleged instances of Mr. Webster's inebriety: 

The famous speech is that of Daniel Webster, delivered at Roch- 
ester, in which he is reported to have proposed to pay the national debt 
with a silver half-dollar, then and there produced and tendered, and in 
which, moreover, he is reported, alluding to Genesee Falls, to have de- 
clared that no people could be enslaved that had a waterfall a hundred 
feet high. The popular story is that the great man was, on a certain 
public occasion, in Rochester, so far under the influence of strong drink 
as to deliver himself in a strain of maudlin discourse, of which the fore- 
going passages, here given in substance only, are remembered and rep- 
resentative specimens. Is the popular story the true story ? 

I, for my part, had seen and heard so many allusions to this 
speech, so many allusions with circumstance, that I did not doubt but 
some escapes substantially of that sort were justly attributable to Web- 
ster. I easily believed, with the majority, that here was a shameful 
lapse on his part that could in no way be denied. Not needing to be 
confirmed in this belief, I yet, while recently a resident of Rochester, 
encountered casual confirmation, in a way that seemed to leave no 
opportunity for doubt. A valued personal friend of mine, of high 
character, with whom I happened to be speaking on a subject natu- 
rally suggesting the mention, said to me : '" Mr. [a distinguished 

citizen of Rochester, formerly mayor of the city] told me last night 
that V/ebster, at a public dinner, actually fell into his arms." The 
allusion tacitly implied was to the occasion of the traditional remarks 
of Webster that I began with substantially repeating. Nothing, there- 
fore, could have seemed more final and conclusive. The directness of 
this testimony was almost perfect. There was but a single step of re- 
move from first authority. The honorable ex-mayor had not told me, 
but he had told a highly esteemed friend of mine. I did not question 
before ; but I could not question now. 

However, being interested in the question of Webster's charac- 
ter, and having by nature and through habit something of the lawyer's 
sense of the necessity of sifting testimony, I resolved to call on the ven- 
erable ex-mayor myself and learn, if I could, the facts in full detail 
from his own lips. I invited a business man of the city, a gentleman 
of the highest reputation, whom I knew to be concerned, as I was 
myself, to learn the unvarnished truth about Webster, to accompany me. 

We found the ex-mayor affably ready to satisfy our curiosity. 
I began, somewhat abruptly, after the matter was introduced: "I 
heard, Mr. Mayor, that Mr. Webster actually fell into your arms." 
"So he did," was the prompt reply. 

Why question further.? Was not the case closed ? But I pur- 



53 

sued : " Will you be kind enough to relate all the circumstances of the 
occasion as fully as you can ?" 

" It was the State Agricultural Fair. Mr. Webster was to be 
the speaker. He arrived ill ; in fact, unable to fulfil his engagement. 
Mr. Seward took his place. But Mr. Webster rallied, and in the even- 
ing a banquet was given in his honor, at which he spoke, delivering, 
as was presumed, the discourse prepared for the Fair ; a splendid speech, 
at any rate." "Anything maudlin about it, Mr. Mayor?" "Noth- 
ing. On the contrary, it was a magnificent piece of oratory." " What 
were the topics discussed.?" "Principally, I think, the tariff question, 
though there was some allusion, I remember, to state repudiation of 
debts." "Did Mr. Webster take a half-dollar out of his pocket and 
propose paying the public debt with it.''" The Mayor looked puzzled, 
but said he remembered nothing of the sort. I mentioned the current 
story to that effect. The Mayor repeated that he recollected nothing 
of that nature. " Did Mr. Webster, perhaps, in speaking of the obliga- 
tion of public debts, use the half-dollar emblematically as a gesture of 
emphasis ?" The Mayor could not say. " Was there at this point any- 
thing incoherent in Mr. Webster's speech.?" "The farthest from it 
possible." "What, Mr. Mayor, were your opportunities for observing 
and hearing?" "I was mayor of the city that year, and so sat next 
Mr. Webster. General Wadsworth presided, with Mr. Seward on his 
left and Mr. Webster on his right." " Did Mr. Webster take wine?" 
" He did. He took wine with his food, and while he was speaking he 
from time to time sipped it from his glass. General Wadsworth filling 
the glass and icing the wine." " Did the wine seem to have the effect 
to cloud his mind or thicken his utterance?" " So far from it, I never 
heard him speak better in my life, and I heard him often." 

" Well, Mr. Mayor, how about his falling into your arms? Tell 
us about that." "Well, he closed his speech with a beautiful compli- 
mentary allusion to Rochester and her fine water-power. He said the 
Queen of England could boast no such fall of water in all her three 
kingdoms. No country, he said, need be dependent on a foreign nation 
for manufactures that possessed such a resource as Genesee Falls, a 
waterfall a hundred feet high. ' I propose,' Mr. Webster said, ' a senti- 
ment : " The City of Rochester and the Mayor tliereof ! " [Our genial 
informant, a fine, erect, venerable figure himself, imitated with admir- 
able effect Mr. Webster's 7)eculiar emphasis and intonation on the word 
'thereof and the gesture, on Mr. Webster's part, that accompanied.] 
With these words Mr. Webster turned toward me, placed a hand on 
each shoulder, meanwhile leaning nearly his whole weight on me for an 
instant, then wheeled round and settled into his seat." "And that 
was the way in which he fell into your arms?" "That was the way." 
"That was all?" "That was all." " Then he did not fall drunk?" 
"Not at all. He was not drunk," "He foo/<: his seat, did he?" " He 



54 

did. The whole action was just a playful gesture of compliment." 
" So, then, there was nothing in his speech about the impossibility of 
enslaving a country that had a waterfall of a hundred feet?" " Noth- 
ing more than what I told you." 

So much for the dialogue of this interview with the Mayor. The 
occasion described by him was identified in more ways than one, and 
quite beyond question, with that on which the maudlin remarks tradi- 
tionally attributed to Webster were reported to have been made. 

My friend drew up in writing a report of the interview, covering 
its material points; and this I soon after read aloud to the Mayor, who, 
having indicated a few unimportant corrections, which I made on the 
spot, set his hand to the document, as a faithful representation of what 
he said. This memorandum, authenticated by the Mayor's autograph, 
is before me as I write. 

It behooves me to add that a few days later we called on another 
Rochester gentleman of high reputation that was present on this cele- 
brated occasion. This second informant was, he told us, seated at the 
extreme end of the table (a long one), away from Mr. Webster. He 
agreed that the speech was a noble one — he thought, never surpassed 
by Mr. Webster ; but he added that at a later hour, after the festivities 
had proceeded to great length, Mr. Webster was called out a second 
time, and that then he appeared to him not to be in a condition for 
speaking. " Did you attribute his disqualification to wine.'" "I did." 
" You know Mr. Webster was ill when he arrived — " " Yes, I was at 
the station, and they got him on a platform-car to speak ; but he said 
little or nothing, was obviously unfit for the exertion." "Well, he was 
thus ill ; he had then rallied and made this long and exhausting speech ; 
he had sat out a tedious after-dinner round of talk, till twelve or one 
o'clock at night; now, with his constant habit of going early to bed, 
with his enfeebled condition at the start, with the prostrating effect of 
the extraordinary exertion of the evening, the natural nervous reaction 
having occurred, query, may not his evident incapacity to speak on this 
second call be accounted for without our attributing it to wine .''" 
" Well, perhaps. I would not certainly say, but I judged it to be due 
to drink." This distinguished gentleman had no report to make of 
maudlin remarks uttered on any one of these several occasions by Mr. 
Webster. All that he witnessed was a slowness and an apparent inabil- 
ity to use his vocal organs on the part of Mr, Webster. This last we 
know, from unimpeachable testimony, was a constitutional peculiarity 
of the man from his early years. Often, in attempting to begin a speech, 
he experienced a kind of paralysis of his vocal organs, that he could 
not overcome without moistening his mouth. 



55 

Light reck of due, unheeding hand and bond — xi. 

" To THE Editors of the Boston Daily Advertiser : 

"In the brilliant essay entitled 'Some Recollections of Rufus 
Choate,' written by Edwin P. Whipple, Esq., and published in Harper's 
Half Hour Series, the following extract may be found on the 44th page. 
Speaking of the friendship between Choate and Webster, the writer says : 

' When Webster desired to raise money he sometimes got Choate 
to indorse his note. When Webster ventured on a daring political move, 
he got Choate to indorse his policy ; and the result was that in either case 
the indorsement entailed on Choate pecuniary embarrassment or popu- 
lar obloquy. If one should consult the archives of the Boston Merchants' 
Bank, there would doubtless appear sufficient reasons why Choate should 
have been occasionally troubled with a want of money, on account of 
heedlessly affixing the hieroglyphic which passed for his name on the back 
of a promise to pay, which bore the more flowing and famiHar signature of 
Daniel Webster.' 

" In what is said here of the pecuniary relations of these two great 
men, bound together by ties of mutual respect and friendship, and of the 
unfavorable results to Mr. Choate, the friendly essayist has been misin- 
formed. It is believed that Mr. Choate never suffered to the extent of a 
dollar by indorsing for Mr. Webster. ' The archives of the Merchants' 
Bank ' whould show that he very seldom indorsed for Mr. Webster ; not 
more than two or three times in all, and then for small sums, not exceed- 
ing a few hundred dollars. These notes were always promptly paid when 
due, or before, by Mr. Webster. The ' archives ' would also show that 
Mr. Webster himself always paid careful attention to his notes at the 
Merchants' Bank, and, if he wanted a note renewed, was as careful and 
punctilious in making a timely application as any merchant in Boston. 
Nor were his pecuniary obligations to the bank ever large ; nor were there 
any of them left unpaid to the loss of the bank. It seems proper that 
these simple facts should be stated in correction of an error which other- 
wise might come to have the force of an undoubted truth. — B." 

[" B." is identified, with great probability, by an eminent Bostonian 
in every way qualified to make the conjecture, as a near relative of Mr. 
Choate. ] 

A word about his debts. I had heard again and again that he 
did not pay. I inquired of Mr. Abbott. Said he, ' Mr. Davis, from 
my personal knowledge, derived from keeping the private accounts of 
Mr. Webster, I have some opportunity of knowing. Not a bill which 
has been presented for two or more years during which I have been 
with him, but has been promptly paid; and a few days before he died, 
he called the overseer of his farm, gave him four hundred dollars to 
pay every man, sent for the minister and paid all that was due him, so 
it shall not be said Daniel Webster died in debt to any man.' 1'hese 
were the words of his private secretary, and I began to think those 
wlio knew Wel)ster best loved him most. — Rev, Mr. Davis, riJ>o.'iin^ 
Mr. Abbotl. 



56 
B 

Heed thou them not that bid thee wail him fallen — xi. 

So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn 

Which once he wore ! 
The glory from his gray hairs gone 
Forevermore ! 

Revile him not, — the Tempter hath 

A snare for all ; 
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, 

Befit his fall ! 

O, dumb be passion's stormy rage, 

When he who might 
Have hghted up and led his age 

Falls back in night. 

Scorn ! would the angels laugh, to mark 

A bright soul driven. 
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, 
From hope and heaven ? 

Let not the land once proud of him 

Insult him now, 
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, 

Dishonored brow. 

But let its humbled sons, instead, 

From sea to lake, 
A long lament, as for the dead, 

In sadness make. 

Of all we loved and honored, naught 
Save power remains, — 

A fallen angel's pride of thought, 
Still strong in chains. 

All else is gone ; from those great eyes 

The soul has fled ; 
Wlien faith is lost, when honor dies, 

The man is dead ! 

Then, pay the reverence of old days 

To his dead fame ; 
Walk backward, with averted gaze. 

And hide the shame ! -. hitiier. 



57 



Not false, as they forswore ! 
Hey who to save the State 
The State to please forebore — i. 

" ' I have my doubts that the speech I am going to make will ruin 
me.' But he played the card with a heavy, a rash, and not a skillful hand. 
It was only the playing of a card — his last card. Mr. Calhoun had said, 
' The farthest Southerner is nearer to us than the nearest Northern man.' 
They could trust him with their work — not with its covenanted pay ! 

" Oh ! Cardinal Wolsey ! there was never such a fall. ' He fell, like 
Lucifer, never to hope again.' The telegraph which brought him tidings 
of his fate was a thunder-stroke out of the clear sky. No wonder that he 
wept, and said, ' I am a disgraced man, a ruined man ! ' His early, his 
last, his fondest dream of ambition broke, and only ruin filled his hand ! 
What a spectacle to move pity in the stones of the street ! 

"But it seemed as if nothing could be spared him. His cup 
of bitterness, already full, was made to run over; for joyous men, full of 
wine and the nomination, called him up at midnight out of his bed — the 
poor, disappointed old man ! — to ' congratulate him on the nomination of 
Scott ! ' And they forced the great man, faUing back on his self-respect, 
to say that the next morning he should 'rise with the lark, as jocund and 
as gay.' Was not that enough ? Oh, is there no pity in the hearts of 
men ? Even that was not enough ! Northern friends went to him, and 
asked him to advise men to vote for General Scott. General Scott is said 
to be an anti-slavery man ; but as soon as the political carpenters put the 
'planks' together at Baltimore, he scrambled upon the platform, and 
stands there on all-fours to this day, looking for ' fellow-citizens, native 
and adopted,' listening for ' that brogue,' and declaring that, after all, he 
is ' only a common man.' Did you ever read General Scott's speeches ? 
Then think of asking Daniel Webster to recommend him for President — • 
Scott in the chair, and Webster out ! That was gall after wormwood. 
They say Webster did write a letter advocating the election of Scott, and 
afterwards said, ' I still live.' If he did so, attribute it to the wanderings 
of a great mind, shattered by sickness ; and be assured he would have 
taken it back, if he had ever set his firm foot on the ground again! 
Daniel Webster went down to Marshfield — to die ! He died of his 7th of 
March speech ! That word endorsed on Mason's Bill drove thousands of 
fugitives from America to Canada. It put chains round our court-house; 
it led men to violate the majesty of law all over the North. I violated it, 
and so did you. It sent Thomas Sims in fetters to his jail and his scourg- 
ing at Savannah ; it caused practical atheism to be preached in many 
churches of New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and worst of all, Boston 
itself. And then, with its own recoil, it sent Daniel Webster to his grave, 
giving him such a reputation as a man would not wish for his utterest foe. 
No event in the American Revolution was half so terrible as his speeches 
in defense of slavery and kidnapping, his abrogation of the right to discuss 



58 



all measures of the Government. We lost battles again and again, lost 
campaigns — but our honor we never lost. The army was without powder 
at Cambridge in '76, without shoes and blankets in '78 ; and the bare feet 
of New England valor marked the ice with blood when they crossed the 
Delaware. But we were never without conscience, never without morality. 
Powder might fail, and shoes might drop, old and rotten, from the soldiers' 
feet ; but the love of God was in the American heart, and no American 
general said, ' There is no law higher than Blue Ridge.' Nay, they 
appealed to God's higher law, not thinking that in politics religion makes 
men mad. While the Philip of slavery was thundering at our gate, the 
American Demosthenes advised us to 'conquer our prejudices' against 
letting him in ; to throw down the wall ' with alacrity,' and bid him come: 
it was a constitutional Philip. How silver dims the edge of steel ! When 
the tongue of freedom was cut out of the mouth of Europe by the sabres 
of tyrants, and only in the British Isles and in Saxon speech could liberty 
be said or sung, the greatest orator who ever spoke the language of Milton 
and Burke told us to suppress discussion ! In the dark and troubled night 
of American politics, our tallest Pharos on the shore hung out a false 
beacon. Said Mr. Webster once, ' There will always be some perverse 
minds who will vote the wrong way, let the justice of the case be ever so 
apparent.' Did he know what he was doing ? Too well. In the winter 
of 1850, he partially prepared a speech in defense of freedom. Was his 
own amendment to Mason's Bill designed to be its text? Some say so. I 
know not. He wrote to an intimate and sagacious friend in Boston, ask- 
ing, ' How far can I go in the defence of freedom and have Massachusetts 
sustain me ? ' The friend repaid the confidence, and said, ' Far as you 
like.' Mr. Webster went as far as New Orleans, as far as Texas and the 
Del Norte, in support of slavery. When that speech came — the rawest 
wind of March — the friend declared : ' It seldom happens to any man to 
be able to disgrace the generation he is born in ; but the opportunity has 
presented itself to Mr. Webster, and he has done the deed.' Cardinal 
Wolsey fell, and lost nothing but his place. Bacon fell ; but the ' wisest, 
brightest,' lived long enough to prove himself the ' meanest of mankind.' 
Strafford came down ; but it was nothing to the fall of Webster. The 
Anglo-Saxon race never knew such a terrible and calamitous ruin. His 
downfall shook the continent. Truth fell prostrate in the street. Since 
then, the court-house has a twist in its walls, and equity cannot enter its 
door ; the steeples point awry, and the ' higher law ' is hurled down from 
the pulpit. One priest would enslave all the 'posterity of Ham,' and 
another would drive a fugitive from his own door ; a third is certain that 
Paul was a kidnapper, and a fourth has the assurance of his consciousness 
that Christ Jesus would have sold and bought slaves. Practical atheism 
became common in the pulpits of America ; they forgot that there was a 
God. In the hard winter of 1780, if Fayette had copied Arnold, and 
Washington gone over to the enemy, the fall could not have been worse. 



59 

Benedict Arnold fell, but fell through — so low that no man quoted him for 
precedent. Aaron Burr is only a warning. Webster fell, and he lay there 
'not less than archangel ruined,' and enticed the nation in his fall. Shame 
on us ! All those three are of New England blood ! " — Theodore Parker's 
Discourse of Webster. 

He loved thee. State, with self-postponing love — xiv. 

" Here is the reason. He wanted to be President. That was all 
of it. Before this he had intrigued — always in a clumsy sort, for he was 
organized for honesty, and cunning never throve in his keeping — had 
stormed, and blustered, and bullied. ' General Taylor the second choice 
of Massachusetts for the President ! ' quoth he. ' I tell you I am to be the 
first,_ and Massachusetts has no second choice.' Mr. Clay must not be 
nominated in '44 ; in '48 General Taylor's was a ' nomination not fit to be 
made.' He wanted the office himself This time he must storm the 
North, and conciliate the South. This was his bid for the Presidency — 
fifty thousand square miles of territory and ten miUions of dollars to 
Texas ; four new slave States ; slavery in Utah and New Mexico ; the 
Fugitive Slave Bill, and two hundred millions of dollars offered to Virginia 
to carry free men of color to Africa. 

These all loved thee, but he moj'e wisely tvell. 
Foreseeing farther, therefore differeiitty — xi. 

"What was the design of all this? It was to 'save the Union.' 
Such was the cry. Was the Union in danger ? There were a few non- 
resistants at the North, who said, ' We will have " no union with slave- 
holders." ' There was a party of seceders at the South, who periodically 
blustered about disunion. Could these men bring the Union into peril ? 
Did Daniel Webster think so? I shall never insult that giant intellect by 
the thought. He knew South Carolina, he knew Georgia, very well. Mr. 
Benton knew of no ' distress,' even at the time when it was alleged that the 
nation was bleeding at ' five gaping wounds,' so that it would take the 
whole omnibus full of compromisers to staunch the blood. 'AH the politi- 
cal distress is among the politicians.' I think Mr. Webster knew there 
was no danger of a dissolution of the Union. But here is a proof that he 
knew it. In 1850, on the 22d of December, he declared, ' There is no 
longer imminent danger of the dissolution of the United States. We shall 
live, and not die.' But soon after, he went about saving the Union again 
and again and again — saved it at Buffalo, Albany, Syracuse, at Annapolis, 
and then at Cap^on Springs." — Theodore Parker's Discourse of Webster. 



6o 



No spirit fallen and reprobate and lost, 

Who still in reft old age could overmatch, 
Refeaiittg them, those miracles of his pHme — 

Twice wrought, O State, for thee — and twice postpone 

Thine imminent doom — xi. 

"He never labored so before, and he had been a hard-working man. 
What speeches he made at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Albany, 
Buffalo, Syracuse, Annapolis ! What letters he wrote ! His intellect was 
never so active, nor gave such proofs of Herculean power. The hottest 
headed CaroHnian did not put his feet faster or farther on in the support 
of slavery. He 

' Stood up the strongest and the fiercest spirit 
That fought 'gainst Heaven, now fiercer by despair.' 

Mr. Webster stamped his foot, and broke through into the great 
hollow of practical atheism, which undergulfs the State and Church. 
Then what a caving in was there ! The firm- set base of northern cities 
quaked and yawned with gaping rents. ' Penn's sandy foundation ' shook 
again, and black men fled from the city of brotherly love, as doves flee 
from a farmer's barn when summer lightning stabs the roof. There was 
a twist in Faneuil Hall, and the doors could not open wide enough for 
Liberty to regain her ancient cradle ; only soldiers, greedy to steal a man, 
themselves stole out and in. Ecclesiastic quick-sand ran down the hole 
amain. MetropoHtan churches toppled, and pitched, and canted, and 
cracked, their bowing walls all out of plumb. Colleges, broken from the 
chain which held them in the stream of time, rushed into the abysmal 
rent. Harvard led the way, Christo et Eccksics in its hand. Down 
plunged Andover, ' Conscience and the Constitution ' clutched in its 
ancient, faihng arm. New Haven began to cave in. Doctors of Divinity, 
orthodox, heterodox with only a doxy of doubt, ' no settled opinion,' had 
great alacrity in sinking, and went down quick, as live as ever, irto the 
pit of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, the bottomless pit of lower law — one 
with his mother, cloaked by a surplice, hid 'neath his sinister arm, and an 
acknowledged brother grasped by his remaining limb !" — Theodore Parker's 
Discourse of Webster. 

His forty years of great example too, etc., p. 5. — The strength for 
union and for safety to the country which Webster exerted by simply 
being the man that he was, was strikingly, if somewhat whimsically, ex- 
pressed by N. P. Willis, in that peculiar rhetoric of which, in his prose, 
that too soon neglected genius was the master : 

* * " the Mississippi-ment of the public mind by the great 
Daniel — he and that river being the only streams that channel the conti- 
nent from end to end with one headway of union." 



6i 



Webster at 19 to James Hervey Bingham. 

" But, Hervey, our prospect darkens ; clouds hang around us. Not 
that I fear the menaces of France ; not that I should fear all the powers 
of Europe leagued together for our destruction. No, Bingham, intestine 
feuds alone I fear. The French faction, though quelled, is not eradicated. 
The Southern States in commotion, a Democrat the head of the executive 
in Virginia ; a whole county in arms against the government of McKean 
in Pennsylvania; Washington, the great poHtical cement, dead, and Adams 
almost worn down with years and the weight of cares. These considera- 
tions, operating on a mind naturally timorous, excite unpleasant emotions. 
In my melancholy moments, I presage the most dire calamities. I already 
see, in my imagination, the time when the banner of civil war shall be 
unturled ; when Discord's hydra form shall set up her hideous yell, and 
from her hundred mouths shall howl destruction through our empire ; and 
when American blood shall be made to flow in rivers by American swords ! 
But propitious Heaven prevent such dreadful calamities ! Internally se- 
cure, we have nothing to fear." 

Hii forty years of great exaj7iple, too. 
Staunchly, in all men's viezu 
To its own promise true — iv. 

"On Boston Common, in July, 1852, just before his death, whei 
he stood in the face of Boston people, whom he had served for thirty 
years, he used these words : ' My manner of political hfe is known to you 
all. I leave it to my country, to posterity, and to the world to see whether 
it will or will not stand the test of time and truth.' Twenty-five years of 
our history have shed a flood of light upon the past, and emblazoned anew 
the records of Mr. Webster's pubhc life. I shall not rehearse them, but 
I say this to you, and I challenge contradiction, that from the beginning to 
the end that record is true to the great principles that presided over the 
birth of the Nation, and found voice in the Declaration of Independence ; 
that were wrought into the very fabric of the Constitution; that carried us, 
with unmutilated territory, and undefiled Constitution, and unbroken au- 
thority of the Government, through the sacrifices and the terrors and the 
woes of civil war ; that will sustain us through all the heats and agues 
which attend the steps of the Nation to perfect health and strength." 

— William M. Evarts. 

He knew eventual wisdom with thee lay — xiv. 

" In the course of it [a reported conversation] he spoke [it was the 
last sorrow of his life] of some recent misrepresentation of his views and 
purposes with respect to some public matters, and added that he should 
take no pains to set the parties right, but they would in due time find out 
their mistake, and then he hoped they would set themselves right." — A 
letter to the N. V. Times. 



62 



The toiling elements tugged at him in vain — xii. 

" The Strong tendency of generous sentiment, when not restrained 
by prudence, to override the prescriptive rights secured by constitutions 
and compacts, the great statesman and guide of men must sternly resist, 
even if resistance expose him to slander and vituperation, to the distrust 
of former friends, to the misunderstanding of his motives, to the charge of 
being a traitor to principles which his whole life has pledged him to uphold. 
A vindictive philanthropy, here and there, and from time to time, reopens 
the flood-gates of slander in the vain hope of disturbing the great states- 
man's repose. The firm earth does not stand with more unshaken firm- 
ness against the raving sea, as it roars and beats upon his Marshfield 
beach, than he stands unmoved in the magnanimity ot his character, and 
the upholding power of conscious rectitude, looking down upon the igno- 
minious efforts of foiled enemies to undermine the grandeur of his 
position." — Boston Courier, Oct. 20, 1852. 

Attd taught the??i that grave wisdom — xi. 

" He addressed himself, therefore, assiduously, and almost alone, 
to what seemed to him the duty of caUing the American people back 
from revolutionary theories to the formation of habits of peace, order 
and submission to authority. He inculcated the duty of submission 
by States and citizens to all laws passed within the province of constitutional 
authority, and of absolute reliance on constitutional remedies tor the cor- 
rection of all errors and the redress of all injustice. This was the politi- 
cal gospel of Daniel Webster. He preached it in season and out of sea- 
son, boldly, constantly, with the zeal of an apostle, and with the devotion, 
if there were need, of a martyr. It was full of saving influences while he 
lived, and those influences will last so long as the Constitution and the 
Union shall endure." — William H. Seward. 

Of the people that to live for was his chosen patriot paii — x. 

" He served the State, and labored for and loved it from boyhood 
up. He withheld no service, he shrank from no labor, he drew no nice 
distinctions as to opportunities or occasions. Whenever a word was to 
be spoken, and could be usefully spoken, to the American people, in tiie 
lecture room, on the anniversary occasions, in the public assemblies, in the 
cities and in the country, on excursions and progresses through large 
stretches of our territory. North and South, East and West, always on an 
elevated stage, and in a conspicuous cause, he gave his great powers to 
this service of the people. 

" What could exceed the breadth and generosity of his views, the 
comprehensiveness, the nationality, of his relations to the people ! Born 
in the Northeastern corner of New England, the Northeastern corner of 
the country, seated for the practice of his profession and for his domestic 
life in the city of Boston, on the very outside rim of onr country's terri- 



^z 



tory, — I defy any one to find, from the moment he left his provincial col- 
lege at Dartmouth, to the time he was buried on the shore of Marshfield, a 
time when that great heart did not beat, and that great intellect did not 
work for the service equally of all the American people. North and South, 
East and West. We do not find all the great men of this country thus 
large and liberal in the comprenension of their public spirit, thus constant 
and warm in the exercise of patriotic feeling. I cannot even allude to the 
immense and frequent pubHc services that Mr. Webster performed ; but I 
have this to say, that I would rather that the men and youth of this coun- 
try should read the peroration of Mr. Webster's speech in reply to Hayne, 
and the peroration of his speech for the country and its peace on the 7th 
of March, 1850, than any equal passages in all the text-books and all the 
oratory of our politics from the time he died until now. I would like to 
have anybody that has been instructed by the last twenty-five years see if 
he could portray the evils, the weaknesses, the woes of nullification under 
the Constitution, the wretchedness and the falsity of the claims and schemes 
of peaceful secession, better than Webster could do and did do in advance. 
I would like to see one touch of art, one word of eloquence, one proof or 
reason that can be added under this stern teaching of a quarter of a cen- 
tury, that is not found in those great speeches now. His countrymen 
questioned him, his countrymen mahgned him ; but it was his country that 
he loved, and he would not curse it for anybody's cursing him. — William 

M. EVARTS. 

To join the waves, 

T/w mustering winds went forth — xiii. 

" Mr. President : I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts 
man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member of the 
Senate of the United States. It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the 
United States ; a body not yet moved from its propriety, not lost to a 
just sense of its own dignity and its own high responsibilities, and a 
body to which the country looks, with confidence, for wise, moderate, pa- 
triotic, and healing counsels. It is not to be denied that we live in the 
midst of strong agitations, and are surrounded by very considerable dan- 
gers to our institutions of government. The imprisoned winds are let 
loose. The East, the West, the North, and the stormy South all combine 
to throw the whole ocean into commotion, to toss its billows to the skies, 
and disclose its profoundest depths. I do not affect to regard myself, 
Mr. President, as holding, or as fit to hold, the helm in this combat of the 
political elements ; but I have a duty to perform, and I mean to perform 
it with fidelity — not without a sense of surrounding dangers, but not with- 
out hope. I have a part to act, not for my own security or safety, for I 
am looking out for no fragment upon which to float away from the wreck, 
if wreck there must be, but for the good of the whole, and the preservation 
of the whole ; and tliere is that which will keep me to my duty during this 
struggle, whether the sun and the stars shall appear, or shall not appear, for 



64 



many days. I speak to-day for the preservation of the Union. ' Hear 
me for my cause.' I speak to-day, out of a soUcitous and anxious heart, 
for the restoration to the country of that quiet and that harmony which 
make the blessings of this Union so rich and so dear to us all." — tVed- 
stef^s Speech in the Senate^ March 7, 1850. 

By Marshall' s side, that pillar of the State — v. 

" If I were to name two men whose services were incomparably 
above those of all others in making this new experiment of free govern- 
ment and of paper constitutions a living power to a great and strenuous 
nation — two that could not have been spared though all others remained 
— I should say that to the great Chief Justice Marshall, and to the great 
forensic, popular, parliamentary defender and expounder of the Constitu- 
tion, Daniel Webster, we most owe what we now enjoy."WM. M. Evarts. 

That saving sense of bond io duty — iv. 

" It is indeed true, as we have always agreed, that all who swear 
to support the Constitution are bound not only to submit to the return cf 
fugitive slaves but to aid in it, if necessary. All honor to Mr. Webster's 
consistency on this point." — Wendell Fhillips' Review of Webster's ^th of 
March speech, Am. A. S. Soc, 1850. 

To thank their generous sons is thrift for states. — xi. 

" If Mr. Webster's reasoning cannot be answered (and this is some- 
what of a hard task), he must in some other way be put down. * * * 
The real truth seems to be, that we are acting over again the scenes of old 
Athens, in the days of Aristides. His rival, Themistocles, went about the 
whole city whispering all manner of surmises against him, so that at length 
the populace were ready to thrust out the best and most distinguished 
man in their commonwealth. On the day when the votes of Athens were 
to decide the fate of Aristides, he asked one of the citizens on his way to 
the voting hall, to whom he was personally unknown, how he was going to 
vote. He told him that he should vole to banish Aristides. ' Why ?' said 
he, ' what has he done ? ' ' Why, nothing,' replied the simple clown, ' that 
I know of ; but I am tired of hearing everybody call him they^j-/.' So is 
it, I fear, among us at the present moment. The man who has com- 
manded more listening ears, and made more hearts beat high, these twenty 
years past than any other man in our great community, is called upon 
by the spirit of the levellers to come down to their humbler place, and 
take his lot with them. '^ has le Senateur 1 There are other men who 
have as good a right to reign as you ; and if we cannot bring you to a level 
by argument, we can do it by contumely and vituperation.' This is the 
brief, but, I am pained to say that I feel constrained to believe, the true 
history of the matter." — Moses Stuart. 



65 



Thy late ' Well done '— xiv. 

" Let those who are doing such deeds of violence against fact and 
truth, call to mind, that Athens, when she had banished her Aristides for six 
years, felt obhged to recall him before the end of that period, and to give 
him her highest confidence and her posts of highest honor. Let them call 
to mind, that when the immortal yEschylus, in one of his lofty and glowing 
tragedies, introduced a sentence replete with eulogy of moral goodness and 
integrity, every eye, in the assemblage of those very Athenians who once 
voted for his banishment, was filled with tears of emotion, and was sponta- 
neously fixed upon Aristides, who was then present. And so will it be 
with us, if the impetuous zeal of the present hour is to march forward until 
it gains its ultimate end. We are full surely preparing for a future re- 
pentance." 

" And is Mr. Webster to be maligned and vituperated, and thrust 
out of the confidence of his fellow citizens, because he will not vote to 
violate solemn compacts ? If this must be done, such a day awaits this 
nation as no politician has yet imagined, and no prophet yet foretold. 
I will never believe that such a day is coming upon the State in which are 
to be found Faneuil Hall, and Bunker Hill, and Concord, and Lexington, 
and the descendants of the men who immortalized themselves there. If 
such a day must dawn on us, for one I would say, rather than gaze upon 
it : ' Hung be the heavens with black ! ' Patriotism, integrity, firmness, 
sound judgment, lofty, soul-thrilling eloquence, may thenceforth despair of 
finding their reward among us." 

" One word more concerning Mr. Webster, and then I have done. Sup- 
pose the violence of the present time succeeds in withdrawing the pubHc 
confidence from him, and he retires from office and from public life. Sup- 
pose even the worst his enemies can wish him should come upon him, and 
he should go into the shades of retirement, and live and die there, un- 
noticed (if this be possible) and as it were unknown. The contest goes 
on, the country is involved in bitter and bloody war, and still his counsel 
is rejected and despised. But he soon leaves this earthly stage of action 
and of contest, and is gathered to his fathers, it may be without a monu- 
ment or eulogy to preserve his name. If all this can be supposed, and 
should actually take place ; what then ? Can the memory of such a man 
perish? No; posterity, divested of partisan feeling and prejudice, will 
erect to him a lofty monument, which will be inscribed on one fagade with 
these most significant words : 

' Justum et tenacem propositi virum, 
Non civium ardor prava jubentium, 
Non vultus instantis tyranni, 
Mente quatit solida.' 

" On another fagade, under his simple name, will be carved in high 
relief : 

"O NOSTRUM KT DKCUS ET COLUMENl" 

— Moses Stuart. 



66 

o 

"His Dartmouth — thine and his — O State, hj fointd" — v. 

Acts of the Legislature had invaded the charter of Dartmouth 
College. "A suit was brought to test their vahdity. It was tried in the 
Supreme Court of the State; a judgment was given against the College, 
and this was appealed to the Supreme Federal Court by writ of error. 
Upon solemn argument, the charter was decided to be a contract whose 
obligation a State may not impair ; the acts were decided to be invalid 
as an attempt to impair it, and you hold your charter under that decision 
to-day. How much Mr. Webster contributed to that result, how much 
the effort advanced his own distinction at the bar, you all know. Well, as 
if of yesterday, I remember how it was written home from Washington 
that ' Mr. Webster closed a legal argument of great power by a peroration 
which charmed and melted his audience.' Often since, I have heard 
vague accounts, not much more satisfactory, of the speech and the scene. 
I was aware that the report of his argument, as it was published, did not 
contain the actual peroration, and I supposed it lost forever. By the 
great kindness of a learned and excellent person. Dr. Chauncy A. Good- 
rich, a professor in Yale College, with whom I had not the honor of 
acquaintance, although his virtues, accomplishments, and most useful life 
were well known to me, I can read to you the words whose power, when 
those lips spoke them, so many owned, although they could not repeat 
them. 

As those lips spoke them, we shall hear them nevermore, but no 
utterance can extinguish their simple, sweet, and perfect beauty. Let me 
first bring the general scene before you, and then you will hear the rest in 
Mr. Goodrich's description. It was in 1818, in the thirty-seventh year of 
Mr. Webster's age. It was addressed to a tribunal, presided over by Mar- 
shall, assisted by Washington, Livingston, Johnson, Story, Todd, and 
Duvall — a tribunal unsurpassed on earth in all that gives illustration to a 
bench of law, and sustained and venerated by a noble bar. He had called 
to his aid the ripe and beautiful culture of Hopkinson; and of his oppo- 
nents was William Wirt, then and ever of the leaders of the bar, who, with 
faculties and accomplishments fitting him to adorn and guide public life, 
abounding in deep professional learning, and in the most various and 
elegant acquisitions — a ripe and splendid orator, made so by genius and 
the most assiduous culture — consecrated all to the service of the law. It 
was before that tribunal, and in the presence of an audience select and 
critical, among whom, it is to be borne in mind, were some gradu- 
ates of the- college, who were attending to assist against her, that he 
opened the cause. I gladly proceed in the words of Mr. Goodrich: 
" Before going to Washington, which I did chiefly for the sake of hearing 
Mr. Webster, I was told that, in arguing the case at Exeter, he had left 
the whole court-room in tears at the conclusion of his speech . This, I 
confess, struck me unpleasantly — any attempt at pathos on a purely legal 
question like this seemed hardly in good taste. On my w.-iy to Washington 



6; 



I made the acquaintance of Mr. Webster. We were together for several 
days in Philadelphia, at the house of a common friend ; and as the College 
question was one of deep interest to literary men, we conversed often and 
largely on the subject. As he dwelt upon the leading points of the case, 
in terms so calm, simple, and precise, I said to myself more than once, in 
reference to the story I had heard, ' Whatever may have seemed appropri- 
ate in defending the College at home, and on his own ground, there will be 
no appeal to the feehngs of Judge Marshall and his associates at Washing- 
ton.' The Supreme Court of the United States held its session, that 
winter, in a mean apartment of moderate size — the Capitol not having 
been built after its destruction in 1814. The audience, when the case 
came on, was therefore small, consisting chiefly of legal men, the elite of 
the profession throughout the country. Mr. Webster entered upon his 
argument in the calm tone of easy and dign :fied conversation. His matter 
was so completely at his command that he scarcely looked at his brief, but 
went on for more than four hours with a statement so luminous and a 
chain of reasoning so easy to be understood, and yet approaching so nearly 
to absolute demonstration, that he seemed to carry with him every man 
of his audience without the slightest effort or weariness on either side. It 
was hardly eloquence, in the strict sense of the term ; it was pure reason. 
Now and then, for a sentence or two, his eye flashed and his voice swelled 
into a bolder noie, as he uttered some emphatic thought ; but he instantly 
fell back into the tone of earnest conversation, which ran throughout the 
great body of his speech. 

* A single circumstance will show you the clearness and absorbing 
power of his argument. I had observed that Judge Story, at the opening 
of the case, had prepared himself, pen in hand, as if to take copious 
minutes. Hour after hour I saw him fixed in the same attitude, but, so 
far as I could perceive, with not a note on his paper. The argument 
closed, and I could not discover that he had taken a single note. Others 
around me remarked the same thing ; and it was among the on dits of 
Washington, that a friend spoke to him of the fact with surprise, when 
the Judge remarked: '"Everything was so clear, and so easy to remem- 
ber, that not a note seemed necessary, and, in fact, I thought little or 
nothing about my notes." ' 

' The argument ended. Mr, Webster stood for some moments 
silent before the Court, while every eye was fixed intently upon him. At 
length, addressing the Chief Justice, Marshall, he proceeded thus: 

' " This, Sir, is my case / It is the case, not merely of that humble 
institution, it is the case of every College in our land. It is more. It is 
the case of every Eleemosynary Institution throughout our country; of all 
those great charities founded by the i)iety of our ancestors to alleviate 
human misery, and scatter blessings along the pathway of life. It is more ! 
It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has property of 
which he may be strij)pcd; for the question is simply this : Shall our State 



68 



Legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their own, to turn it from 

its original use, and apply it to such ends or purposes as they, in their dis- 
cretion, shall see fit ? 

* " Sir, you may destroy this little institution ; it is weak ; it is in 
your hands ! I know it is one of the lesser Hghts in the literary horizon of 
our country. You may put it out. But if you do so, you must carry 
through your work ! You must extinguish, one after another, all those 
great lights of science which, for more than a century, have thrown their 
radiance over our land ! 

' " It is. Sir, as I have said, a small College. And yet, there are 
those who love it — " 

' Here the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping 
down broke forth. His Ups quivered ; his firm cheeks trembled with emo- 
tion ; his eyes were filled with tears, his voice choked, and he seemed 
struggling to the utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself which 
might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling. I will not attempt to 
give you the few broken words of tenderness in which he went on to speak 
of his attachment to the College. The whole seemed to be mingled 
throughout with the recollections of father, mother, brother, and all the 
trials and privations through which he had made his way into life. Every 
one saw that it was wholly unpremeditated, a pressure on his heart, which 
sought reliefin words and tears. 

' The court-room, during these two or three minutes, presented an 
extraordinary spectacle. Chief Justice Marshall, with his tall, gaunt 
figure bent over as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of 
his cheeks expanded with emotion, and eyes suffused with tears; Mr. 
Justice Washington at his side,with his small and emaciated frame, and coun- 
tenance more like marble than I ever saw on any other human being, lean- 
ing forward with an eager, troubled look ; and the remainder of the Court, 
at the two extremities, pressing, as it were, toward a single point, while the 
audience below were wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath 
the bench to catch each look, and every movement of the speaker's face. 
If a painter could give us the scene on canvass — those forms and counte- 
nances, and Daniel Webster as he then stood in the midst, it would be one 
of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence. One thing it 
taught me, that i\\Q pathetic depends not merely on the words uttered, but 
still more on the estimate we put upon him who utters them. There was 
not one among the strong-minded men of that assembly who could think it 
unmanly to weep, when he saw standing before him the man who had 
made such an argument, melted into the tenderness of a child, 

' Mr. Webster had now recovered his composure, and fixing his 
keen eye on the Chief Justice, said, in that deep tone with which he some- 
times thrilied the heart of an audience : 

' " Sir, I know not how others may feel " (glancing at the opponents 
of the College before him), " but, for myself, when I see my Alma Mater 



69 



surrounded, like C^sar in the Senate-house, by those who are reiterating 
stab upon stab, I would not, for this right hand, have her turn to me and 
say, Et tu quoque, mi fill ! And thou too, my son ! " 

' He sat down. There was a death-Hke stillness throughout the room 
for some moments ; every one seemed to be slowly recovering himself, and 
coming gradually back to his ordinary range of thought and feeling.' " — 
Cheaters eulogy on . Webster, delivered at Dartmouth College. 
Then a wise master of the spell appeared — vii. 

" In the spring of 1824, Mr. Webster was much concerned in the 
discussion then going on in the House of Representatives at Washington, 
upon the tariff. One morning he rose very early — earlier even than was 
his custom — to prepare himself to speak upon it. From long before day- 
light till the hour when the House met he was busy with his brief. When 
he was far advanced in speaking a note was brought to him from the Su- 
preme Court, informing him that the great case of Gibbons vs. Ogden 
would be called on for argument the next morning. He was astounded at 
the intelligence, for he had supposed that after the tariff question should 
have been disposed of, he would still have ten days to prepare himself for 
this formidable conflict, in which the constitutionality of the laws of New 
York, granting a steamboat monopoly of its tide-waters, would be decided. 
He brought his speech on the tariff to a conclusion as speedily as he 
could, and hurried home to make such preparation for the great law argu- 
ment as the shortness of the notice would permit. He had then taken no 
food since his morning's breakfast — but instead of dining he took a mode- 
rate dose of medicine and went to bed, and to sleep. At ten P. M. he awoke, 
called for a bowl of tea, and without other refreshment went immediately to 
work. To use his own phrase, ' the tapes had not been off the papers for 
more than a year.' He worked all night, and, as he has told me more than 
once, he thought he never on any occasion had so completely the free use 
of all his faculties. He hardly felt that he had bodily organs, so entirely 
had his fasting and the medicine done their work. At nine A. M., after 
eleven hours of continuous intellectual effort, his brief was completed. He 
sent for the barber and was shaved ; he took a very slight breakfast of tea 
and crackers ; he looked over his papers to see that they were all in order, 
and tied them up ; he read the morning journals, to amuse and change his 
thoughts, and then he went into court, and made that grand argument 
which, as Judge Wayne said above twenty years afterward, 'released every 
creek and river, every lake and harbor in our country, from the interference 
of monopolies.' Whatever he may have thought of his powers on the 
preceding night, the court and the bar acknowledged their whole force that 
day. And yet, at the end of five hours, when he ceased speaking, he 
could hardly be said to have taken what would amount to half the refresh- 
ment of a common meal for above two and thirty hours, and, out of the 
thirty-six liours immediately preceding, he had for tliirty-one been in a 
state of very high intellectual excitement and activity." — George Tickuor's 
Reminiscences, 



70 



a force and element 

To lawyers, for a less unworthy aim — viiL 

" Whatever else concerning him has been controverted by anybody, 
the fifty thousand lawyers of the United States, interested to deny his pre- 
tensions, conceded to him an unapproachable supremacy at the bar. How 
did he win that high place ? Where others studied laboriously, he medi- 
tated intensely. Where others appealed to the prejudices and passions of 
courts and juries, he addressed only their understandings. Where others 
lost themselves among the streams, he ascended to the fountain. While 
they sought the rules of law among conflicting precedents, he found them 
in "the eternal principles of reason and justice. 

" But it is conceding too much to the legal profession to call Daniel 
Webster a lawyer. Lawyers speak for clients and their interests — he 
seemed always to be speaking for his country and for truth. So he rose 
imperceptibly above his profession ; and while yet in the Forum he stood 
before the world a Pubhcist. In this felicity he resembled, while he sur- 
passed, Erskine, who taught the courts at Westminster the law of moral 
responsibility; and he approached Hamilton, who educated the courts at 
Washington in the constitution of their country and the philosophy of gov- 
ernment. — William H. Seward. 

Adams and Jefferson in fate atidfaine, p. 26. — An interesting letter 
from Josiah Quincy (Mr. Lowell's "A Great Public Character") to Web- 
ster, bearing date Boston, August 3, 1826, the day following the delivery 
of the eulogy on Adams and Jefferson, furnishes valuable testimony to 
the immediate brihiant effect on the best minds produced by that oration. 
It shows also the peculiar esteem admiration and affection in which the 
orator was held : 

" Your perfect success yesterday ought to be as satisfactory to you 
as it is to your friends. I think nothing has ever exceeded or, perhaps, 
equalled it." 

Quincy then proposes to Webster the question whether he intend- 
ed to attribute to Hancock an imagmary speech against the Declaration of 
Independence, alluded to in the eulogy. Such was the general impression, 
Quincy says, contrary to his own. Quincy was right, and the rest were 
wrong. 

" If I am mistaken," Quincy says, " and the general impression con- 
cerning this part of your discourse be correct, then permit me, in that deep 
sentiment of respect and affection which I entertain for your name, fame 
and influence, all which I would have as spotless as it is brilliant, to in- 
quire," etc. 

The concluding portion of the eulogy on Adams and Jeff"erson is as 
follows; it will serve to justify and illustrate more than one of the allusions 
of the poem : 



71 



" And now, fellow citizens, let us not retire from this occasion with- 
out a deep and solemn conviction of the duties which have devolved upon 
us. This lovely land, this glorious liberty, these benign institutions, the 
dear purchase of our fathers, are ours;- ours to enjoy, ours to preserve, 
ours to transmit. Generations past and generations to come hold us re- 
sponsible for this sacred trust. Our fathers, from behind, admonish us, 
with their anxious paternal voices ; posterity calls out to us, from the 
bosom of the future ; the world turns hither its solicitous eyes ; all, all con- 
jure us to act wisely, and faithfully, in the relation we sustain. We can 
never, indeed, pay the debt which is upon us ; but by virtue, by morality, 
by religion, by the cultivation of every good principle and every good 
habit, we may hope to enjoy the blessing, through our day, and to leave it 
unimpaired to our children. Let us feel deeply how much of what we are 
and of what we possess we owe to this liberty, and to these institutions of 
government. Nature has, indeed, given us a soil which yields bounteously 
to the hand of industry, the mighty and fruitful ocean is before us, and the 
skies over our heads shed health and vigor. But what are lands, and seas, 
and skies, to civilized man, without society, without knowledge, without 
morals, without religious culture ; and how can these be enjoyed, in all their 
extent and all their excellence, but under the protection of wise institutions 
and a free government ? Fellow citizens, there is not one of us, there is 
not one of us here present, who does not, at this moment, and at every 
moment, experience in his own condition, and in the condition of those 
most near and dear to him, the influence and the benefits of this liberty 
and these institutions. Let us then acknowledge the blessing, let us feel 
it deeply and powerfully, let us cherish a strong affection for it, and resolve 
to maintain and perpetuate it. The blood of our fathers, let it not have 
been shed in vain ; the great hope of posterity, let it not be blasted. 

"The striking attitude, too, in which we stand to the world around 
us, a topic, to which, I fear, I advert too often, and dwell on too long, 
cannot be altogether omitted here. Neither individuals nor nations can 
perform their part well, until they understand and feel its importance, and 
comprehend and justly appreciate all the duties belonging to it. It is not 
to inflate national vanity, nor to swell a light and empty feeling of self- 
importance, but it is that we may judge justly of our situation, and of our 
own duties, that I earnestly urge upon you this consideration of our posi- 
tion and our character among the nations of the earth. It cannot be 
denied, but by those who would dispute against the sun, that with America, 
and in America, a new era commences in human affairs. This era is dis- 
tinguished by free representative governments, by entire religious liberty, 
by improved systems of national intercourse, by a newly awakened and an 
unconquerable spirit of free incjuiry, and by a diffusion of knowledge 
through the community, such as has been before altogether unknown and 
unheard of. America, America, our country, fellow citizens, our own 
dear and native land, is inseparably connected, fast bound up, in fortune 



72 



and by fate, with these great Interests. If they fall, we fall with them ; if 
they stand, it will be because we have maintained them. Let us contem- 
plate, then, this connection, which binds the prosperity of others to our 
own; and let us manfully discharge all the duties which it imposes. If we 
cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, Heaven will assist us to 
carry on the work of human hberty and human happiness. Auspicious 
omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our owti firmament now 
shines brightly upon our path. Washington is in the clear, upper sky. 
These other stars have now joined the American constellation ; they circle 
round their centre, and the heavens beam with new hght. Beneath this 
illumination let us walk the course of life, and at its close devoutly com- 
mend our beloved country, the common parent of us all, to the Divine 
Benignity." 

JOHN ADAMS TO DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Dear Sir : — I thank you for your discourse delivered at Plymouth 
on the termination of the second century of the landing of our forefathers. 
Unable to read it, from defect of sight, it was last night read to me by our 
friend Shaw. The fullest justice that I could do it would be to transcribe 
it at full length. It is the effort of a great mind, richly stored with every 
species of information. If there be an American who can read it without 
tears, I am not that American. It enters more perfectly into the genuine 
spirit of New England, than any production I ever read. The observa- 
tions on the Greeks and Romans; on colonization in general; on the 
West India Islands ; on the past, present, and future in America, and on 
the slave trade, are sagacious, profound, and affecting in a high degree. 

Mr. Burke is no longer entitled to the praise — the most consum- 
mate orator of modern times. 

What can I say of what regards myself? To my humble name, 
" Exegisti monumentum aere perennius." 

This oration will be read five hundred years hence, with as much 
rapture as it was heard. It ought to be read at the end of every century, 
and indeed at the end of every year, for ever and ever. 

I am, sir, with the profoundest esteem, your obliged friend and 
very humble servant, John Adams. 

MoNTEZiLLO, December 23, 182 1. 



73 



Yet his words of cheer were sober, and he checked and chastened j oy , 
Teaching tts, by heed of duty, in the man to merge the boy. — ^x. 

" Let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this genera- 
tion, and on us, sink deep into our hearts. Those who established our lib- 
erty and our government are daily dropping from among us. The great 
trust now descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that which 
is presented to us as our appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a 
war for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. 
Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other 
founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us 
a great duty of defence and preservation ; and there is opened to us, also, 
a noble pursuit, to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us. Our 
proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. 
In a day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. 
Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its 
institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our 
day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered. 
Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great 
objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a settled 
conviction, and an habitual feeling, that these twenty-four States are one 
country. Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let 
us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called 
to act. Let our object be, our country, our whole country, and noth- 
ing BUT OUR country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself 
become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of 
Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which the world may gaze with 
admiration forever." — Webster, at the laying of the corner stone of the 
Bunker ffill tnonument. 

Seemed to find in his one bosom room capacious of it all — x. 

" In looking over the pubhc remains of his oratory, it is striking to 
remark how, even in that most sober and massive understanding and 
nature, you see gathered and expressed the characteristic sentiments and 
the passing time of our America. It is the strong old oak which ascends 
before you ; yet our soil, our heavens, are attested in it, as perfectly as if 
it were a flower that could grow in no other climate and in no other hour 
of the year or day. Let me instance in one thing only. It is a peculiar- 
ity of some schools of eloquence that they embody and utter, not merely 
the individual genius and character of the speaker, but a national con- 
sciousness, — a national era, a mood, a hope, a dread, a despair, — in which 
you listen to the spoken history of the time. There is an eloquence of an 
expiring nation, such as seems to sadden the glorious speech of Demos- 
thenes ; such as breathes grand and gloomy from the visions of the proph- 
ets of the last days of Israel and Judah ; such as gave a spell to the ex- 
pression of Grattan and Kossuth, — the sweetest, most mournful, most 



74 

awful of the words that man may utter, or which man may hear, — the elo- 
quence of a perishing nation. There is another eloquence, in which the 
national consciousness of a young or renewed and vast strength, of trust 
in a dazzling, certain, and limitless future, an inward glorying in victories 
yet to be won, sound out as by the voice of clarion, challenging to contest 
for the highest prize of earth ; such as that in which the leader of Israel in 
its first days holds up to the new nation the Land of Promise; such as that 
in which in the well-imagined speeches scattered by Livy over the history 
of the 'majestic series of victories' speaks the Roman consciousness of 
growing aggrandizement which should subject the world; such as that 
through which, at the tribunes of her revolution, in the bulletins of her 
rising soldier, France told to the world her dream of glory. And of this 
kind somewhat is ours; cheerful, hopeful, trusting, as befits youth and 
spring; the eloquence of a State beginning to ascend to the first class of 
power, eminence, and consideration, and conscious of itself It is to no 
purpose that they tell you it is in bad taste ; that it partakes of arrogance 
and vanity ; that a true national good breeding would not know, or seem 
to know, whether the nation is old or young ; whether the tides of being 
are in their flow or ebb; whether these courses of the sun are sinking 
slowly to rest, wearied with a journey of a thousand years, or just bounding 
from the Orient unbreathed. Higher laws than those of taste determine 
the consciousness of nations. Higher laws than those of taste determine 
the general forms of the expression of that consciousness. Let the down- 
ward age of America find its orators and poets and artists to erect its 
spirits, or grace and soothe its dying ; be it ours to go up with Webster to 
the rock, the monument, the capitol, and bid 'the distant generations 
hail ! ' " — RuFus Choate. 

His equal mood sedate, 

Self-governing, wise to wait. 

Reverent ioiuard God, he shared to thee, State ! — iv. 

" The mingled energy and temperance of national character, im- 
plied in this orderly liberty, has perhaps, in Mr. Webster, its grandest indi- 
vidual expression. Most of his own political life was passed in opposition, 
and opposition in many cases to innovations he deemed foolish and ruinous; 
but he ever exhibited that solid temper which bears temporary defeat with 
fortitude, which doggedly persists in the hope of future victory, and which 
scorns to resist constituted authority by the demagogue's weapons of fac- 
tion or anarchy. He knew, as well as well as the most fiery and impa- 
tient radical, that such a course is not the most attractive to the imagina- 
tion and i^assions, and not always to the impulses of the moral nature. ' It 
is no pleasant employment,' he says, in reference to his own long opposi- 
tion to General Jackson's administration, ' it is no holiday business, to 
maintain opposition against power and against majorities, and to contend 
for stern and sturdy principles against personal popularity — against a rush- 
ing and overwhelming confidence that, by wave upon wave, and cataract 
after cataract, seems to be bearing away and destroying whatsoever would 
withstand it." — Westminster Jievieiei, January, 1853. 



75 

Miscalled it pride, that scorn of popular arts — xi, 

" But I might recall other evidences of the sterling and unusual 
qualities of his pubUc virtue. Look in how manly a sort he — not merely 
conducted a particular argument or a particular speech, but in how manly 
a sort, in how high a moral tone, he uniformly dealt with the mind of his 
country. PoUticians got an advantage of him for this while he Hved ; let 
the dead have just praise to-day. Our public life is one long electioneer- 
ing, and even Burke tells you that at popular elections the most rigorous 
casuists will remit something of their severity. But where do you find him 
flattering his countrymen, indirectly or directly, for a vote ? On what did 
he ever place himself but good counsels and useful service ? His arts were 
manly arts, and he never saw a day of temptation, when he would not 
rather fall than stand on any other. Who ever heard that voice cheering 
the people on to rapacity, to injustice, to a vain and guilty glory ? Who 
ever saw that pencil of light hold up a picture of ' manifest destiny ' to 
dazzle the fancy? How anxiously rather, in season and out, by the ener- 
getic eloquence of his youth, by his counsels bequeathed on the verge of a 
timely grave, he preferred to teach that by all possible acquired sobriety of 
mind, by asking reverently of the past, by obedience to the law, by habits 
of patient and obedient labor, by the cultivation of the mind, by the fear 
and worship of God, we educate ourselves for the future that is revealing. 
Men said he did not sympathize with the masses, because his phraseology 
was rather of an old and simple school, rejecting the nauseous and vain 
repetitions of humanity and philanthropy, and progress and brotherhood, 
in which may lurk heresies so dreadful, of socialism or disunion ; in which 
a selfish, hollow, and shallow ambition masks itself, — the siren song which 
would lure the pilot from his course. But I say he did sympathize with 
them ; and because he did, he came to them not with adulation but with 
truth ; not with words to please, but with measures to serve them ; not 
that his popular sympathies were less, but that his personal and intellectual 
dignity and his pubHc morality were greater." — Rufus Choate. 

Wide hopes he learned for thee, 

His coimtry, soon to be 

IVide as his hopes outspread from sea to Sea. — iii. 

" And now, Mr. President, instead of speaking of the possibihty or 
utility of secession, instead of dwelhng in these caverns of darkness, in- 
stead of groping with those ideas so full of all that is horrid and horrible, 
let us come out into the light of day ; let us enjoy the fresh airs of Liberty 
and Union ; let us cherish those hopes which belong to us; let us devote 
ourselves to those great objects that are fit for our consideration and our 
action ; let us raise our conceptions to the magnitude and tlie importance 
of the duties that devolve upon us ; let our comi)rchension be as broad as 
the country for which we act, our asi)irations as high as its certain destiny; 
let us not be pygmies in a case that calls for men. Never did there devolve 



76 



on any generation of men higher trusts than now devolve upon us for the 
preservation of this Constitution and the harmony and peace of all who are 
destined to live under it. Let us make our generation one of the strong- 
est and the brightest hnks in that golden chain which is destined, I fondly 
beheve, to grapple the people of all the States to this Constitution for ages 
to come. It is a great popular constitutional government, guarded by leg- 
islation, by law, by judicature, and defended by the whole affections of the 
people. No monarchical throne presses these States together ; no iron 
chain of despotic power encircles them ; they live and stand upon a gov- 
ernment popular in its form, representative in its character, founded upon 
principles of equaUty, and calculated, we hope, to last forever. In all its 
history it has been beneficent ; it has trodden down no man's liberty ; it 
has crushed no State. Its daily respiration is liberty and patriotism ; its 
yet youthful veins all full of enterprise, courage and honorable love of 
glory and renown. Large before, the country has now, by recent events, 
become vastly larger. This repubhc now extends with a vast breadth 
across the whole continent. The two great seas of the world wash the one 
and the other shore. We realize, on a mighty scale, the beautiful descrip- 
tion of the ornamental edging of the buckler of Achilles : 

" 'Now the broad shield complete the artist crowned 
With his last hand, and poured the ocean round ; 
In living silver seemed the waves to roll, 
And beat the buckler's verge, and bound the whole.' " 

— Webster's Speech, March 7, 1850. 



T/ie man 7vas more than the great words he spoke, p. 5. — "There 
was also a general feeling in the United States that the man was infinitely 
greater than his works — a behef in a reserved power in his character 
which circumstances left undeveloped, or which no adequate emergency 
had called forth. He was so uniformly victorious over every eminent man 
with whom he came into collision in debate, and achieved his triumphs with 
such a seeming absence of strain and effort, calmly putting forth just 
strength enough to ensure his success, and affording here and there vanish- 
ing ghmpses of idle reserves of argument and passion, which he did not 
deem necessary to bring into action, that the impression he universally 
made was that of a man great by original constitution, with an incalculable 
personal force behind his manifested mental power, and therefore one 
whose deeds were not the measure of his capacity." — Westminster Review, 
January. 



n 



The thunderer stood, and chose from out his store — ^xii. 

" What were his sensations during the delivery of this splendid 
oration, he has himself narrated in answer to a friend. ' I felt/ said he, 
' as if everything I had ever seen, or read, or heard, was floating before me 
in one grand panorama, and I had little else to do than to reach up and 
cull a thunderbolt and hurl'it at him.'" 

A different hand makes this substantially similar note of the same 
statement from Mr. Webster. 

" He has left on record his feelings when he rose to reply. After 
the first dizzy moment was over, during which a sea of faces whirled 
around him ; after a single recollection that his brother had fallen dead a 
few years before in a climax of similar excitement, his faculties appeared 
to grow strangely calm, and there opened before him, as in a boundless 
gulf of space, all that he had ever read, or thought, or felt, so that he had 
but to summon, with a wish, whatever he required, and it came." 

The circumstances of his brother's death, to which he here refers, are 
related as follows : 

"Mr. Webster was speaking, standing erect, on a plain floor, the house 
full, and the court, andjurors, andauditors intently listening to his words, with 
all their eyes fastened upon him. Speaking with full force, and perfect 
utterance, he arrived at the end of one branch of his argument. He closed 
that branch, uttered the last sentence, and the last word of that sentence, 
with perfect tone and emphasis, and then, in an instant, erect, and with 
arms depending by his side, he fell backward, without bending a joint, and, 
so far as appeared, was dead before his head reached the floor." — Private 
Correspondence I, p. 42. 

Eloquence rapt into action, action like a god, sublime — x. 

" Who that heard it, or has read it, will ever forget the desolating 
energy of his denunciation of the African Slave Trade, in the discourse at 
Plymouth, or the splendor of the apostrophe to Warren, in the first dis- 
course on Bunker Hill ; or that to the monumental shaft and the survivors 
of the Revolution in the second ; or the trumpet-tones of the speech placed 
in the lips of John Adams, in the eulogy on Adams and Jefferson; or the 
sublime peroration of the speech on Foot's resolution ; or the lyric fire of 
the imagery by which he illustrates the extent of the British Empire ; or 
the almost supernatural terror of his description of the force of conscience 
in the argument in Knapp's trial. Then how fresh and bright the descrip- 
tion of Niagara ! how beautiful the picture of tlie morning in his private 
correspondence, which as well as his familiar conversation, was enlivened 
by the perpetual play of a joyous and fertile imagination ! In a word, 
what tone in all the grand and melting music of our language is there 
which is not heard in some portion of his speeches or writings; while rea- 
son, sense and truth comnose tlie basis of the strain? Like the sky above 



78 

us, it is sometimes serene and cloudless, and peace and love shine out from 
its starry depths. At other times the gallant streamers, in wild fantastic 
play — emerald, and rose, and orange, and fleecy white — shoot upward from 
the horizon, mingle in a fiery canopy at the zenith, and throw out their 
flickering curtains over the heavens and the earth; while at other times 
the mustering tempest piles his towering battlements on the sides of the 
north; a furious storm-wind rushes forth from their blazmg loop-holes, 
and volleyed thunders give the signal of the elemental war." — 

Edward E\'erett. 

Height elate, transfigured feature, majesty sublime loith grace — x, 

" Great as many of these are as compositions, they lose much of 
their essential spirit in being reported, from the absence of the subtle, 
elastic, life-communicating energy, which streamed from the majestic pres- 
ence, and kindled in the inspiring voice of the orator himself. A form of 
imposing manhood — a head and brow which had no parallel among twenty- 
five miUions of people for massivemess — a swarthy face, dark, glittering, 
flexible to all emotions — eyes flashing with intelligence — a voice of great 
strength and compass, capable of being heard by ten thousand people in 
the open air, and of unapproachable power in its upper piercing tones — 
and all enforced by action which seemed to be the very instrument of 
will ; — to be in the presence of these on some occasion worthy of their ex- 
ercise was, for the time, to have no thoughts, sentiments, or passions but 
those which were gleaming in the eyes, and heaving in the breast, and 
quivering in the upHfted arm of the self-enkindled orator before you." — . 
Westminster Review, Jan^tary, 1853. 

Glorious in the awful beauty of Olympian form and face — x, 

" The cubic capacity of his head surpassed all former measurements 
of mind. Since Charlemagne, I think there has not been such a grand figure 
in all Christendom . A large man, decorous in dress, dignified in deport- 
ment, he walked as if he felt himself a king. Men from the country, who 
knew him not, stared at him as he passed through our streets. The coal- 
heavers and porters of London looked on him as one of the great forces of 
the globe; they recognized a native king. In the Senate of the United 
States he looked an emperor in that council. Even the majestic Calhoun 
seemed common compared with him. Clay looked vulgar, and Van Buren 
but a fox. His countenance, like Straff"ord's, was ' manly black.' His mind 

Was lodged in a fair and lofty room. 
On his brow 

Sat terror, mixed with wisdom ; and at once 

Saturn and Hermes in his countenance. 

What a mouth he had ! It was a lion's mouth ; yet there was a sweet 
grandeur in his smile, and a woman's softness when he would. What 



79 

a brow it was ! What eyes ! like charcoal fires in the bottom of a deep, 
dark well. His face was rugged with volcanic fires — great passions and 
great thoughts — 

The front of Jove himself ; 

An eye like Mars to threaten and command. 

— ■ Theodore Parker's Discourse of Webster. 
Voice that like the pealing clarion clear above the battle loud — x. 

" I was present (then a boy), in the outskirts of that vast audience, 
and well remember that, when order was restored, after the confusion de- 
scribed by Mr. Ticknor, Mr. Webster's clarion voice was distinctly heard 
at the spot where I stood. His voice, in public speaking, was a very pecu- 
har one. Whether speaking in the open air, or under a roof, he could 
make himself heard to a great distance, apparently without much efi'ort, 
and without being unpleasantly loud to those who were near him. This 
was partly due to the quality of his voice, which was naturally pitched at 
a high key, but which was tempered by such a richness of tone that it was 
never in the smallest degree shrill. It was due also to what might be 
called the quantity of his voice. He had an unusual capacity of chest and 
vocal organs, and hence his voice was one of extraordinary volume. It 
was, moreover, so entirely under his control, when his vocal organs were 
in full play, that it never broke, however high it might rise in the scale of 
its natural compass, or whatever might be the state of his emotions. At 
the same time, there was a peculiarity about his organs of speech that I 
have heard him describe as a momentary paralysis. It sometimes hap- 
pened to him, on rising to speak suddenly, that they utterly refused to 
perform their office until moistened by a slight draught of water. As soon 
as this was done the inability vanished, and did not return upon him." 
— Curtis' s Life of Webster. 

Slow imagiftalion kindling, kindling stow, but flaming vast — x. 

" His imagination seems to have been a faculty roused by the ac- 
tion of his nature after it had reached a certain pitch of excitement ; and 
then partakes of the general grandeur of his mind." — Westminster Review, 
Jan., 1853. 

That grave Websterian speech — iv. 

" Webster disdained all parade of rhetoric or logic, of learning or 
eloquence; would not affect excitement when he was not excited; and 
was probably the only great orator too proud to please an expectant audi- 
ence by any exaggeration of the subject on which he spoke. 

" Objects lay in his mind as they lie in nature ; and their natural 
order was never disturbed in his speech from any appetite for ai)plause. 

" Always equal to the occasion, he despised all lifting of the occa- 
sion to the height of his own reputation." — Westminster Review, January, 
1853- 



8o 



His equal mood sedate. 
Self-governing, wise to wait—iv. 

' It was noted editorially in the Evening Post newspaper, Mr. Bry- 
'ant's journal, in the course of an article not by any means unmixedly eulo- 
gistic, written on the occasion of Webster's death, that such was the ha- 
bitual self-restraint of his bearing that throughout the forty years of his 
public life he had never, within the knowledge or behef of the writer, ex- 
posed himself to be called to order in even the most exciting debates of the 
parUamentary assembly. [For the foregoing I have been obliged to rely 
on memory of several years since.] 

This trait of self-restraint in Webster, and its tempering from the 
religious sense, attracted the attention of a writer in the " Westminster 
Review" for January, 1853, who says: 

" Commonly, his intellect, though penetrated with will, is free from 
wilfulness. Always self-moved, it was very rare that he was morbidly self- 
conscious ; and while he was not an economist in the use of the personal 
pronoun, he purged the ' I ' from all idiosyncrasies. It was the understand- 
ing of the m.an that spoke so imperiously, not his prejudice or egotism. 
Pride of intellect was, in him, identical with pride of character; and he 
would have fell the same shame in being detected in a sophism or false- 
hood. Misrepresentation is, in his view, as deadly an intellectual as moral 
sin. Accordingly, he seems to reason under a sense of personal responsi- 
bihty, and his statements sound like depositions taken under oatli. His 
perceptions of things and their relations were so clear, calm, and compre- 
hensive, that his countrymen always held him morally accountable for 
mental error, and judged his logic in the spirit in which they would judge 
another man's motives. As he never received, so he never appeared to expect 
any toleration for mistakes ; he was ready to stand or fall by the plain reason 
of his case ; and, while his facts and arguments were unanswered or un- 
answerable, he rarely honored an insinuation leveled at his motives by an 
outbreak of rage, but treated it with a toss of imperious contempt or a flash 
of withering scorn. He could not, had he been in Burke's place, have 
condescended to write the ' Letter to a Noble Lord.' Thus, when a library 
of vituperation was written against him for remaining in the cabinet of 
Mr. Tyler, after the other Whig members had resigned, he remarked, in 
the course of a speech to some of his friends in Massachusetts : ' No man 
of sense can suppose that, without strong motive, I should wish to differ 
in conduct from those with whom I had long acted ; and as for those per- 
sons whose charity leads them to seek for such motive in the hope of per- 
sonal advantage, neither their candor nor their sagacity deserves anything 
but contempt.' The look which accompanied this, and the tone in which 
'candor' and 'sagacity' were uttered, had an intensity of meaning more 
effective than volumes of ordinary invective." — Westminster Review, Jan- 
uary, 1853. 



8i 

[From Scribner's Monthly for July, 1876.] 
DANIEL WEBSTER AND THE COMPROMISE MEASURES OF 185O. 

Is it not time we reconsidered our verdict on Daniel Webster — the 
Daniel Webster, I mean, of 1850, and the compromise measures? 

But there have been two verdicts — a verdict of the few, in his 
favor, and a verdict of the many, against him. It is the verdict of the 
many against him concerning which I raise the question, whether it should 
not be revised and reversed. 

I herewith move to reopen the case. Speaking in the name of the 
majority, grown since the death of the man, until now, as it seems to me, 
it comprises almost the whole new American nation ; speaking in this col- 
lective name, I ask, Were we not passionate and hasty ? We have out- 
lived our haste and our passion, but our condemnation still rests on the 
man whom we condemned. 

Have we not done Webster wrong ? Was he guilty ? We had 
reason, but had we good reason ? Perhaps we mistook, and pronounced, 
unawares, our curse on the innocent head. Let us call back our scape- 
goat from the wilderness, and consider whether we shall not unpronounce 
our curse. Let us do more. Let us make ready to change our curse into 
a blessing, if Webster deserves it — a blessing tardy, indeed, but full-hearted 
at last, and forty miUion strong. It may be a not unsuitable act of justice, 
on our part, with which to celebrate and signalize this memorial year of 
the nation. 

If it was not a fall ignominiously suffered, it may have been a stand 
heroically maintained — that speech of the seventh of March eighteen 
hundred fifty. Then, too, the cycle of popular harangues with which, 
during the two following years that preceded his death, he supported his 
speech in the Senate, will appear to have been a long agony of Laocoon, 
on Webster's part, in which Laocoon stood, and did not fall ; in which he 
stood, and, standing, upheld the faUing State of Troy. To the purpose 
of showing that such was, indeed, the fact, I devote the present paper. 

I accordingly invite the reader to enter with me upon a summary 
examination of Webster's public course in connection with the memorable 
compromise measures, so called, of eighteen hundred fifty. 

He supported those measures in Congress and before the people. 
I should say, perhaps, supported the principle of those measures rather 
than those measures themselves. For Webster was not in the Senate 
when the measures were adopted, and he never pretended to approve 
them entirely in the form which they finally assumed. Still it is not too 
much, probably, to say that his influence carried them in Congress ; and it 
is certainly not too much to say that his influence procured their accept- 
ance by the country. 

His responsibility for them is thus seen to be very large. It is 
quite just, therefore, that he should, in a great degree, be judged by his 
part in these momentous transactions. He lias himself put on record liis 



82 

own opinion, that his speech on the general subject, delivered March 7, 
1850, in the United States Senate, was probably to be regarded as the 
most important speech of his Hfe. As respects, at least, his own subse- 
quent fame, it has, thus far, proved, indeed, to be of pregnant and disas- 
trous importance. But he expected, as also he elected, to be judged by it. 
He made that speech, as he made all his speeches, after full and ripe de- 
hberation of his course. He never afterward repented of his words. Nay, 
he said his words over and over again, with august eloquence, with solemn 
emphasis, in a series of the most remarkable popular addresses that have 
ever passed into literature, during the brief critical period that intervened 
before his death, in 1852. Let us judge Daniel Webster, fairly and 
strictly, by his relation to the compromise measures of 1850. We shall 
but be giving to him the judgment that he himself invoked. 

We may conveniently pursue our examination, by considering suc- 
cessively, in their order, the following questions, which, perhaps, well 
enough cover the whole extent of the case : 

1. Did Webster act conscientiously? 

2. Did he act consistently? 

3. Did he act patriotically ? 

4. Did he act wisely ? 

5. Did he act right? 

First, then. Was Webster conscientous in supporting the compro- 
mise measures of 1850 ? 

Those measures included as a conspicuous feature, the famous, or 
infamous, or famous and infamous, Fugitive Slave Law. This, certainly, 
looks bad. That was a shocking law. It was shocking in two aspects. 
It was shocking for the thing it sought to do, and it was shocking for the 
way in which it sought to do that thing. It sought to remand the fugitive 
slave to his slavery. In course of doing this, it claimed to make, at the 
simple beck of the marshal who was pursuing tlie alleged fugitive, a slave- 
catcher of every freeman that chanced to be at hand, and it virtually ten- 
dered to the judicial officer engaged a petty bribe to decide against, in- 
stead of for, the hunted man. In a word, it proposed to do a shocking 
work in a gratuitously shocking way. This must not be disguised. In- 
deed, it cannot be. Any statesman might well pray to be delivered from 
the dire supposed necessity of sustaining such a law. For the Fugitive 
Slave Law was, in itself, an almost irredeemably odious enactment. 

But let us candidly consider Webster's actual part in sustaining 
this odious law. What was his part? Did he originate it ? No. Did he 
speak, as a legislator, in favor of adopting it? No. Did he, as a legis- 
lator, vote for the law ? No. What then did he do respecting it ? After 
its enactment, he advised and persuaded his countrymen to accept it and 
abide by it. That was Webster's actual public part in the support of the 
Fugitive Slave Law. 

Large, therefore, as was Webster's just responsibility for the com- 



83 

promise measures of 1850, his responsibility was not that of the legislatoi 
who projected them, or who urged their first adoption. It was chiefly the 
responsibihty of a citizen, and of an administrative officer, who counseled 
to his countrymen good faith in accepting legislation once accomplished, 
objectionable though it was, as the prudent choice, and, therefore, the 
morally right choice, among necessary evils. 

But did not the seventh of March speech, by anticipation, cover 
the Fugitive Slave Bill that was to be, or something even worse than that, 
with Webster's explicit and emphatic approval ? So Theodore Parker as- 
serts in his celebrated discourse. But Theodore Parker is mistaken. 
Webster was, indeed, misreported by the newspapers of the time, to have 
used the following language ; " My friend at the head of the Judiciary 
Committee [Mr. Mason] has a bill on the subject now before the Senate 
with some amendments to it, which I propose to support, with all its pro- 
visions to the fullest extent." The relative "which" was here misplaced. 
The sentence should have read: " A bill on the subject now before the 
Senate, which, with some amendments to it, I propose to support," etc. 
So the words stand in the text of the speech, as printed in Webster's 
Works.* The correction was promptly and publicly made at the time. It 
is hard, therefore, to understand how a man of conscience, as Theodore 
Parker certainly was, could reconcile it with his sense of honesty, to repeat 
this injurious accusation two years afterward over the great statesman's 
fresh-made grave. The fact seems to be, that Theodore Parker's fiery 
zeal for human freedom became a furnace, in which, too often, charity and 
scruple alike were consumed. 

What, then, Webster really did, in his seventh of March speech, 
respecting the return of fugitive slaves, was to pledge his support as legis- 
lator to some law supposed to be effective for that purpose. But was not 
even this inexcusable on Webster's part ? Could any law for a purpose so 
revolting deserve Webster's support as a national legislator ? Irrespective 
of bad features that it might incidentally contain, was not a fugitive slave 
law bad in its essential purpose ? Yes, certainly, regarded absolutely, 
such a law, however framed, was bad. But badness is always relative — 
that is to say, some things are worse than others. That which is abso- 
lutely bad may be relatively good — which is precisely what is true con- 
cerning a suitable fugitive slave law. Absolutely, such a law was bad — . 
bad, exactly as the Federal Constitution itself was bad, being accurately 
on the same moral level with that instrument, neither better nor worse. 
The Federal Constitution expressly provided for the return to their masters 
of absconding slaves. This Constitution every national, and, indeed, every 
State legislator took an oath to support. To favor, in good faith, there- 
fore, some effective law for the purpose, was only to do what every mem- 
ber of the national councils, in becoming such member, had imphcitly 
sworn to do. 



*Vol. v.,pp. 354-355. 



84 

Was not, then, the Federal Constitution itself bad ? To this 
question the same answer as before must be given. Absolutely, yes, — 
relatively, no. The constituting of the Union among these States, how- 
ever bad in some respects, was, on the whole, better than the alternative. 
It was so at the beginning. It remained so in 1850. It remained so, we 
thought, in 1861, and we did not give up thinking so during four disastrous 
years of fratricidal war. 

We have thus briefly answered the question, Why should Webster, 
acting as national legislator, have volunteered to support a7iy fugitive 
slave law ? It was his plain duty to do so — a duty implicitly acknowledged 
by him, and by all his fellow legislators in common with him, in the very 
oath itself by which they and he became part of the public councils of the 
nation. Besides, the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Story 
concurring, and himself preparing the decision, had before decided, con- 
trary to Webster's long-cherished, and then still cherished, conviction of 
constitutional propriety, that the active duty of discharging the obhgation 
respecting fugitive slaves belonged to Congress, and not to individual 
States. Still further, as matter of history, many of the Northern States, 
gratifying an irresponsible fondness for empty demonstration of the in- 
stinct of liberty, had enacted obstructive laws, some of them denouncing 
penalties to any of their officials who should participate in the recovery of 
fugitive slaves. It thus happened that there was left to the national legis- 
lator absolutely no honorable way of escape from the hateful obligation 
to provide a fugitive slave law. Good faith required that the obligation 
be frankly acknowledged and honestly fulfilled — required it of Webster, 
and required it of Webster's associates and successors as well — unless, in- 
deed (for I must be careful myself to observe the considerate charity 
which Webster's own constant example enjoins) — unless, indeed, I say, 
their conscientious views were different from his . " Now, sir," said Web- 
ster, in a speech on the Compromise measures, delivered in the Senate, 
July 17, 1850, "I ascribe nothing but the best and purest motives to any 
of the gentlemen, on either side of this chamber, or of the other house, 
who take a view of this subject which differs from my own. * # * 
They are just as high-minded, as patriotic, as pure, and everyway as well- 
intentioned as I am." Again at Buffalo, in 185 1, he used a similar strain 
of language. Such noble self-restraint and generosity on Webster's own 
part imposes obligations on Webster's defender. 

But now a further question remains : Why should Webster, as a 
citizen, have supported the actual fugitive slave law of history? To this 
question a twofold answer may be given. First, it luas a law, and law- 
abiding was of the deepest instinct and most seated habit of Webster's 
mind. He may be said to have given his whole life, in the main, to the 
one work of teaching his countrymen the value to them of their institu- 
tions of government. He had won his greatest fame, on a signal former 
occasion of deliberative strife, in vindicatmg the obligation of Federal law 



85 

against the brilliant and subtle sophistications of Hayne and Calhoun. 
That former occasion concerned a matter in which the South was the 
party feeling aggrieved. Here a matter arose, in which the party feeling 
aggrieved was the North. What kind of broad national statesmanship, 
what kind of consistent fair dealing, would that be, which should itself 
take to " nullifying " now, having memorably demonstrated the folly of 
" nullification " then ? As Webster said of himself in his own grand way, 
in that great platform speech of his, dehvered at Buffalo, in May, 1851 
(which I would have every young countryman of mine study, for its manly 
popular eloquence, for its ripe historical wisdom, conspicuous by the clear 
analysis and perspective in which it is displayed, and last, for its noble and 
ennobling moral tone), he was made a whole man, and he did not mean to 
make himself half a one. The consideration that the Fugitive Slave Bill 
had been enacted — that it was now part of the supreme law of the land, 
would alone have been sufficient to determine Webster in its favor. 

But there was anocher consideration that with him was more cogent 
still. He thought that some fair law for the purpose, and the enacted law, 
since it had been enacted, was essential to the preservation of the na- 
tional Union. I do not say now that Webster was wise in thinking this — 
for I am not yet discussing the wisdom of his course — I only say that he 
thought it. He further thought that the preservation of the Union was 
the true paramount moral, as well as political, interest of the American 
people. Again, I do not say that, in holdmg this view, he was right, for I 
am not yet discussing the ethics of his course. I only say that he held 
this view. 

I am defending Webster's honesty now. His consistency, his pa- 
triotism, his wisdom, his abstract ethical correctness even, are just now, 
and for the immediate purpose in hand, matters of secondary and subordi- 
nate interest. I do not care how consistent he was, nor how patriotic, nor 
how wise, nor even how right, in the abstract, he may, by some good luck, 
but without conscious purpose, have happened to be — if he was not honest. 
If Webster was hollow and insincere, if he played the hypocrite, if he lied, 
let him remain damned, say I, in the general esteem, and let his memory 
stink. I would not cast a sprig of rosemary on his dishonored and dis- 
honorable grave. But, if Webster meant well, however he erred grievously 
in judgment, why, then, we may continue to have, at least, a mighty frag- 
ment left to us from a broken fame — something better than a torso, being 
not beheaded and bereft of the chief glory and crown, its sky-beholding 
front unashamed — for our sobered but still delighted admiration. 

Charles Francis Adams was the first " Free Soil" candidate for Vice- 
President ot the United States. He was an ardent anti-slavery partisan. 
He differed with Daniel Webster in 1850. He perhaps inherited something 
of an ancestral prepossession against Daniel Webster. At any rate, ho 
identified himself with the rapidly developing political organization that 
subsequently became the victorious Republican party, and, at length, 



S6 

elected Abraham Lincoln. Ten years had now elapsed ; the Compromise 
measures were still standing undisturbed as laws, on the statute-book of 
the nation. The Missouri Compromise^ meantime, had been abrogated, 
and Kansas had, in consequence, been made the theater of most disgrace- 
ful border strife in the interest of slavery propagandism. The Constitu- 
tion, notwithstanding, was ostensibly maintained. The peace had not yet 
been broken by any act of war. Menaces, however, of secession in Con- 
gress, ordinances of secession in slave State Legislatures, were the order 
of the day. Whole delegations of Senators and Representatives from 
several seceding States had ostentatiously and defiantly withdrawn from 
their seats in the council chambers of the Capitol at Washington. In one 
word, EIGHTEEN HUNDRED FIFTY had returned again, and worse. 

Under these circumstances, after a whole decade of years spent in 
sleepless agitation at the North, always resounding with " rubadub " defama- 
tion of Webster for his treachery to freedom — what spectacle then did the 
Repubhcan majority in Congress present to the world and to history? 
Why, they passed, by an overwhelming vote, joint resolutions of the two 
houses, substantially affirming the position of Webster in 1850! The 
name of Mr. Charles Francis Adams, then in Congress from Massachu- 
setts, heads the list of ayes. Here are the resolutions, abridged for want 
of space, but not misrepresented • 

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of 
America in Congress assembled, That all attempts on the parts of the Legislatures of 
any of the States to obstruct or hinder the recovery and surrender of fugitives from ser- 
vice or labor, are in derogation of the Constitution of the United States, inconsistent 
with the comity and good neighborhood that should prevail among the several States, 
and dangerous to the peace of the Union. 

Resolved, That the several States be respectfully requested to cause their statutes 
to be revised, with a view to ascertain if any of them are in conflict with, or tend to 
embarrass or hinder the execution of the laws of the United States, made in pursu- 
ance of the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution of the United 
States, for the delivering up of persons held to labor by the laws of any State and es- 
caping therefrom; and the Senate and House of Representatives earnestly request that 
all enactments having such tendency be forthwith repealed. * * * * 

Resolv d. That we recognize the justice and propriety of a faithful execution of 
the Constitution and laws made in pursuance thereof, on the subject of fugitive slaves, 
or fugitives from service or labor, and discountenance all mobs or hindrances to the 
execution of such laws, and that citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the priv- 
ileges and immunities of citizens in the several States. 

Mark, when these resolutions were passed, the Fugitive Slave 
Law, that "bill of abominations," was unrepealed and unamended; the 
Territories remained unprotected by that " ordinance of freedom," the 
Wilmot Proviso; and still, what Webster was denounced without measure, 
not simply as unwise, not simply as inconsistent, but as dishonest, for do- 
ing in 1850, that snme thing, in substance, ten years later, the headlong 
Republican majority in both houses of Congress were at unseemly and 
ridiculous pains to do in 1861. 

Now, I suppose it will hardly be claimed that it was consistent for 



^7 

eager Abolitionists to pass such resolutions as these. But, does it follow 
that Mr. Adams and the rest were all of them dishonest ? That they were 
hypocrites, apostates ? No ; these gentlemen were frightened, and not with- 
out reason. Disunion loomed near at hand and it looked dreadful. It 
was a specter that they wanted to lay at any cost. Who can blame them? 
The whole country stood aghast, on the brink of disunion and war. From 
Boston, fourteen thousand one hundred twenty-seven legal voters, out of 
nineteen thousand that exercised the right of suffrage at the preceding elec- 
tion, sent to Congress a memorial, signed within two days' space, in favor 
of adopting measures of compromise ! The Crittenden Compromise, which 
went far beyond the compromise of 1850 in yfclding to Southern demands, 
was urged upon Congress by twenty-two thousand Boston signatures. No 
wonder if consternation invaded the halls of Congress. Men who had per- 
formed gallantly in the part of agitation and of opposition before, now 
found themselves brought face to face with the solemn responsibilities of 
administration and of power. The situation sobered them. They acted as 
it was natural to act. They acted inconsistently, but they did not act dis- 
honestly. And, if Webster, too, of whose sagacity it was to fore- 
see what they at last saw with their eyes — if Webster was inconsistent, 
let it be frankly confessed that he was also not more dishonest than 
they. For the very same behavior, to damn him, while we clear them — is 
this justice ? But — 

Was Webster inconsistent ? That question is our second topic. 

The heads under which inconsistency is alleged against Webster 
for his seventh of March speech, are the following: i. His declaring in 
favor of the restoration of fugitive slaves ; 2. His avowal respecting new 
States to be formed out of Texas ; 3. His refusal to vote for applying 
the Wilmot Proviso to the Territories about to be organized. 

The first one of these heads has already been treated. It need 
only be added that Webster never previously expressed himself in a sense 
hostile to restoring fugitive slaves, and that he had often expressed himself 
in a sense favorable to it. 

As to the second one of these heads, Webster undoubtedly, though 
not then in Congress, opposed the annexation of Texas, when that pro- 
ject was in contemplation. The project notwithstanding succeeded. It 
succeeded by the votes of Northern men, who then immediately became 
pioneer " Free Soilers," that is, political Abolitionists. The consummating 
act took the form of a series of joint resolutions on the part of Congress, 
sealing a compact with the republic of Texas. One feature of the com- 
pact was this : 

" New States of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to 
said State of Texas, and having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent 
of the sai<l State, be formed out of the territory thereof, wliich shall be entillod to ad- 
mission under the provisions of the l'"ederal Constitution. And such .States as may be 
formed out of that [)ortion of said territory lying south of 36 (leg. 30 min. north lati- 
tude, connnonly known as the Missouri Compromise line, shall be admitted into the 



S8 



Union with or without slavery, as the people of each State asking admission may de- 
sire ; and in such State or States as shall be formed out of said territory north of said 
Missouri Compromise line, slavery or involuntary servitude (except for crime) shall be 
prohibited." 

The meaning of this is as plain as language can well make it. 
Now, in his seventh of March speech, Mr. Webster, as befitted his capac- 
ity of statesman, very guardedly, but very firmly, expressed himself in 
favor of fulfilling the solemn State obligation thus created. It was a re- 
mote and contingent matter, but, hypothetically, Webster subscribed his 
name, and his fame, and his authority — to what ? Why, to the observ- 
ance of governmental honor and good faith. That was the whole of it. 
The fact of annexation, against Webster's efforts, was now fully accom- 
plished. It was past and complete. Webster thought that statesmanship 
and state morality alike were concerned in recognizing it accordingly. Is 
such a view of the fact, accomplished, at all oppugnant to his previously 
urged objections to the accomplishing of the fact ? What inconsistency 
is there between resolving, on the one hand, not to vote for annexation 
while annexation was in process, and resolving, on the other hand, to carry 
out the pledge of the Government implied in the act of annexation, when 
annexation was a fact ? 

The third head of allegation against the consistency of Webster 
may soon be dismissed. In the first place, it must candidly be admitted 
that a formal inconsistency does here exist. But the inconsistency is merely 
formal. Webster had, undoubtedly, often expressed himself in favor ot the 
principle of prohibiting slavery by law in the Territories. On the seventh 
of March he waived, not the principle, but the application of the princi- 
ple to Territories where he was satisfied the application was unnecessary. 
He still expressly adhered to the principle, for, in this very speech, he used 
the following language : " Wherever there is a particular good to be done ; 
wherever there is a foot of land to be stayed back from becoming slave 
territory, I am ready to assert the principle of the exclusion of slavery." 
It was consistent for Webster to sacrifice consistency as to a matter of 
form, for the sake of that interest which he always regarded as paramount, 
namely, the safety and peace of the Union. Whether he acted wisely in 
doing as he did, I do not here consider. It is enough that, in the very arti- 
cle, and by the very fact, of consenting to be inconsistent in form, he, in 
substance, remained most truly consistent. 

In the absence of direct proof that Webster was inconsistent 
or insincere, why, it will be natural to ask, should any one have had the 
face to accuse him of insincerity or mconsistency? What motive was im- 
puted to Webster by his enemies for being, as they alleged, untrue to truth 
or to himself? To this inquiry there could be but one answer: The motive 
imputed was selfishness. Webster, they say, wanted to be President. This 
leads us to our third topic, the question. 
Did Webster act patriotically ? 
Patriotically, that is, with reference to the Compromise measures of 



89 

1850. As respects his previous life, patriotism is conceded to Webster. 
On the seventh of March, however, it is charged that he fell — fell by am- 
bition. His desire to be President proved too strong for his virtue. Let 
U3 candidly consider the charge. 

In the first place, suppose it granted that Webster wished to be 
President. This, it is urged, was a weakness. Well, suppose that too 
yielded. It was not yet a baseness. It was the last infirmity of noble 
mind. Nothing is made out to Webster's discredit, except that he was 
human. The material point is untouched, what wrong thing did his weak 
wish lead him to do ? The reply is prompt, it led him to seek Southern 
support. Well, what was there wrong in that ? If he was to be Presi- 
dent at all, ought he not to have sought Southern support ? Not to re- 
ceive Southern support would have been to be President of a section 
of the country, and to enter a wedge for the riving of the Union. True 
patriotism, Websterian patriotism certainly, required him to seek Southern 
support, if he sought to be President. The material point would still be, 
what wrong thing did he do to invite Southern support ? The reply is, he 
did several wrong things. First, he offered to the South a fugitive slave 
law. Yes, but that offer was in the Constitution and in the decisions of 
the Supreme Court, before it was in Webster's speech. He offered to the 
South nothing that was not clearly its due. He simply gave it its own. 
But he upheld a worse fugitive slave law than it was necessary or wise to 
have. Yes, he did ; but, at the same time, he declared, before all men, 
that'the law was different from what he would have chosen, and that it 
was, in its nature, subject to amendment. Meantime, he urged, it ought 
to be executed. Well, there was the Wilmot Proviso ; he offered to waive 
that in application to New Mexico and Utah. This he undoubtedly did ; 
but in the same breath he explained that it was only because he thought 
slavery to be already, in another way, more certainly excluded. What 
offer was this to the South, except an offer magnanimously to forbear using 
superior strength for insult to the weak, where to use it for protection to 
the strong was not needful? But he offered to divide Texas into addi- 
tional States, to be devoted to slavery. Yes, Webster did, indeed, with 
great caution of statement, volunteer to say that, in a certain necessarily 
remote, and probably quite impossible, future contingency, distinctly de- 
scribed in a solemn legislative pledge of the national faith, he would vote 
for admitting new slave-holding States, formed out of Texas, when they 
should present themselves with stt/ficient population. In other words, he 
stood forward as an honorable legislator should have done, and avowed 
himself ready to give to the South exactly what was nominated in the bond. 
With characteristic frankness and characteristic acuteness, he accomixanied 
the avowal with a hint to the South that, in the word "sufficient" was hid- 
den a just reserve, that might prove of great value to freedom. 

What else is charged against Webster for his seventh of March 
speech ? Nothing else worth particular mention. On these grounds, al- 



90 

most exclusively, Webster's defamers build their accusations against Web- 
ster's patriotism. With such offers as these to the South, Webster hoped, 
they say, to buy Southern support. And at what cost ? Why, at the cost 
of losing the support of the North, capable of outvoting the South nearly 
two to one. What a desperate game ! The South withheld its support. 
That simple fact is the best confutation of the charge. Webster was, un- 
doubtedly, disappointed. In truth, he did not disguise his chagrin. But 
his chagrin was the chagrin of a patriot, and not that of a traitor. He was 
sorry, he said, to have a false chapter of history written. He believed that 
he had done the South justice, and he fully believed that justice would 
satisfy the South. It grieved him that the record should appear contrary 
to the fact, as he, perhaps too generously, assumed the fact to be. He 
probably hoped to see the South, by its action, convince the North that he 
had rightly represented its opinion and feeUng. His patriotism was, in 
this instance, too sanguine, but it was not, therefore, the less noble nor the 
less saving. But the record, contrary or conformable to fact, is Webster's 
true vindication. 

The truth is, Webster was conciHatory in temper, and tone, and 
expression, in his seventh of March speech ; but, in point of substantial 
advantage, he conceded nothing whatever to the South. He was kindly 
just, and that was all. He was fully warranted in saying, as he said, with 
his peculiar inimitable Websterian emphasis, at Buffalo, in 1851 : " If the 
South wish any concession from me, they will not get it ; not one hair's 
breadth of it. If they come to my house for it, they will not find it, and 
the door will be shut; I concede nothing." Remember, that Webster 
could not say one word in public, that did not immediately make the circuit 
of the nation. He might as well have said these things in Charleston, as 
to have said them at Buffalo. The South read this speech, almost before 
the words ceased to burn from those fervent lips. And this, too, the South 
read, said in the same speech : " I am a Northern man. I was born at 
the North, educated at the North, have lived all my days at the North. I 
know five hundred Northern men to one Southern man. My sympathies, 
all my sympathies, my love of liberty for all mankind of every color, are 
the same as yours. * » * * you will find me true to the 
North, because all my sympathies are with the North. My affections, my 
children, my hope, my everything, are with the North." 

Let it be borne in mind that these things were said previous to the 
Presidential election, that they were said as publicly as if they had been 
said in the Senate on the seventh of March, and that they were said to the 
South as much as to the North. And now, let candid men answer : What 
kind of bidding for Southern votes is this ? What kind of subserviency 
to the South? Let our young men read the whole speech, and judge for 
themselves whether it was made by a patriot, or by a poltroon — ^judge for 
themselves, whether a vast concourse of people stood two hours on a spring 
day, unsheltered, in a drenching rain, to let a hoary renegade of seventy 



91 

years, unsheltered like themselves, though in feeble health, debauch their 
conscience, and stub if}' their common sense. 

It may well be doubted if a statesman was ever placed in circumstances 
to undergo a severer test of the temper of his patriotism, than that which 
Webster underwent in 1850. Imagine the situation. North and South 
were balanced against each other, like the stem and the stern of a great 
ship, resting by her middle on a reef The waves rocked the vessel of 
state and threatened to break her in two amidships. The utmost strain 
that she seemed able to bear, was wrenching her already, and still the 
storm increased. Every moment, she appeared about to go asunder. 
There was one hope of safety. That hope lay in measures of compromise. 
But a Northern statesman might well have said to himself: My section 
will not approve such measures. True, there is no other salvation. But 
that salvation, the North will never accept. My vote should not be want- 
ing ; but of what use will be my vote, if that for which I vote is spurned 
by my constituents ? I shall merely damn myself in the opinion of those 
who, after the inevitable breach shall have come, must thenceforward be 
my countrymen. The breach, I shall not avert. My country is ruined, 
whatever I do, but why should I needlessly ruin myself? I will not vote 
for these measures. This would have been perfectly natural language for 
a statesman in Webster's situation to use. But Webster did not use it. 
He had no wish or thought to survive his country. " I have a part to act, 
not for my own security or safety," is his lofty and pathetic langugage of 
the seventh of March ; " for I am looking out for no fragment on which to 
float away from the wreck, if wreck there must be ; but ifor the good of the 
whole and the preservation of all, and there is that which will keep me to 
my duty during the struggle, whether the sun and the stars shall appear or 
shall not appear for many days. I speak to-day for the preservation of the 
Union. * * * * These are the motives and the sole 

motives that influence me, in the wish to communicate my opinions to the 
Senate and the country." 

B'lt Webster saw, no one more plainly, the course that mere con- 
sulting of his own safety would recommend. "Suppose," he says, in his 
Buffalo speech — " suppose I had taken such a course. How could I be 
blamed for it ? Was I not a Northern man ? Did I not know Massa- 
chusetts feelings and prejudices? But what of that? I am an American. 
I was made a whole man, and I did not mean to make myself half a one." 

B'.it Webster's high fidelity was but half, it was hardly half, of the great 
round of his patriotism. To be hopeful is, sometimes, almost more than 
to be simnly true. And the hope that, through every extreme of her for- 
tune, Webster held on behalf of his country, was, in 1850, perhaps greater 
and more diflicult patriotism than was his mere stark fidelity. He sp'-ke 
in ti c Senate to save his country, and t':en he re-olvcd upon the Hercu- 
lean labor of persuading his countrymen to let their country be saved. He 
accomplished both tasks, but he perished in accomplisliing them. He 



92 

faced two perils and did not blench. He faced the peril of being rejected 
politically, as he was, and he faced the peril of being written into Uterature, 
as he has been, a traitor to liberty. It was a vast effort of patriotism to 
be proposed to a man, every pulse of whose blood beat for humanity and 
for freedom, that, for the sake of his country, he should consent to appear 
in the vivid but wronging literary portraiture of his time, a recreant to the 
cause of freedom, and a traitor to the cause of humanity. This effort of 
patriotism, Webster recognized as proposed to himself — proposed, while it 
was yet uncertain whether there would be a future generation of his coun- 
trymen to redress his outraged fame. But Webster did not shrink. Theo- 
dore Parker notes it of Webster, that, on the morning of the seventh of 
March, he said to a fellow-senator, " I have my doubts that the speech I 
am going to make will ruin me." To a clergyman, afterward, he said, " It 
seemed to me, at the time, that the country demanded a human victim, 
and I saw no reason why the victim should not be myself" Mr. Webster's 
manner evinced such sincerity and deep patriotic disinterestedness, that he 
[the clergyman] was moved to tears, which do not cease to start at every 
recollection of the interview.* 

I have seemed to concede that Daniel Webster indulged the desire 
to be President. It is probably true that he did. From the principles of 
human nature in general, it is safe to conclude, also, that his motives in 
the desire were not entirely unseliish. Beyond doubt, he was ambitious. 
But to doubt, on the other hand, that his motives, even in his ambition, 
were to a still greater degree unselfish, than selfish, would be blindness to 
the true character of Daniel Webster, as an individual man. It was his 
instinct and his habit to identify himself with his country ; but this does 
not mean that he identified his country with himself He desired, first, to 
make his country ever more glorious than she was, and, secondary, subor- 
dinate, inseparable, was his desire to be glorified himself in his country. 
His patriotism may not have been perfectly pure. It probably was not. 
But that a purer patriotism than Daniel Webster's ever burned in any 
human breast, it would be venturesome to maintain. He had an extraor- 
dinary travailing sense of vicarious responsibility on behalf of his country 
— its good behavior, and its permanent well-being. He thought that he 
could serve her, and he wanted to serve her. To serve her most effectu- 
ally, place was much. Men say, he ought to have been satisfied. It was 
more to be Webster than it was to be President. This is true. Webster 
could magnify the office of President, far beyond the measure to which the 
office of President could magnify him. And, if all were now said, then, 
undoubtedly, Webster's wish to be President would have to be counted a 
weakness — weakness venial, indeed, but weakness still. But all is not 
said. To be President would not have made Webster a greater patriot, a 
greater statesman, a greater orator, than he already was; but it would 
have enabled him to confer immensely greater benefits upon his country. 

* Note to Dr. Nehemiah Adams's Funeral Discourse. 



93 



It is a mistake, and a mischievous mistake, to suppose that we lose noth- 
ing, as a nation, by having a vulgar man, or an indifferent man, or, indeed, 
any man less good than the best, for our President. The Presidency is 
not merely a name, it is a thing. It is, in fact, as well as in name, the 
chief place of power and service at the disposal of the American people. 
The President's character determines the tone of his whole Administration. 
The Cabinet are his choice and his appointment. Directly, or indirectly, 
every department of affairs, from the highest official to the humblest, feels 
the hand of the President. It is an incalculable misfortune to the nation 
to elect an inferior man to the place. Imagine the differer.ce that it might 
have made to this people, if Webster had survived to be President, in the 
place of Franklin Pierce. It was, therefore, no baseness; it was not, 
necessarily, even a mere weakness ; it may have been chiefly, I believe it 
was chiefly, true patriotism in Daniel Webster, to desire to be President. A 
man may possibly be timid and selfish, as much as modest, in abdicating, 
or decHning, or avoiding, arduous responsibility. On the other hand, a 
man may possibly be unselfish and generous, even more than ambitious 
and greedy, in seeking responsible place. There was no other position 
possible to Daniel Webster, in which he could be so serviceable to the 
country, as in the position of President. So much power, of so many 
kinds, belongs to the President apart from the man, that cannot belong to 
the man apart from the President, that Webster, who had known Presidents 
and who knew himself, may well be forgiven for wishing that he could work 
on behalf of his country with the long leverage in his favor that the chief 
magistracy of the republic, playing on the whole stabilicy of the State for 
its fulcrum, would have given him. 

It must, of course, remain always a somewhat barren matter of mere 
differing opinion, as to what motives, how mingled, actuated V/ebster's 
public hfe. It is difficult, however, and it would seem not very magnani- 
mous to read the record of how he acted, both in the popular eye and in 
the eye of confidential friendship, during forty conspicuous and strenuous 
years, and believe that he was other than patriotic. More difficult still — 
one might confidently challenge the generous and enlightened young 
American public of to-day, to try the experiment — ^more difficult still it 
would prove, to begin, without prepossession, and read the printed volumes 
of his eloquence, and not take the irresistible impression, that here spoke 
a man to whom sordid aims were strange, abhorrent, impossible. Let us 
do as Webster himself did, when any one spoke slightingly in his presence 
of John Milton's poetry. He would take down " Paradise Lost," and read 
a passage of the poem aloud. If they cry down Daniel Webster to you, 
read him, and say, " This man, not a patriot ? Credat Judmis / " Web- 
ster's printed works are the sufficient vindication of the patriotism of 
Webster. 

If we have now saved to ourselves the right to hold by Daniel 
Webster as, upon tiie whole, an honest, a consistent, and a jiatriotic man, 



94 



it is of less consequence that we make him out also a wise statesman. But 
that question comes next in order, forming our fourth topic. 

Did Webster act wisely ? 

Wisdom consists, first, in choosing good ends, and then m seeking 
those ends by good means. The end that Webster chose was the preser- 
vation of the Union. Was this a good end for American statesmanship ? 
If it was not, then certainly Webster failed as a statesman ; for, to the 
preservation of the Union he dedicated and devoted his public life. 

It has sometimes been urged against the statesmanlike genius and 
achievement of Webster, that he never originated any great measures of 
state. This is true, I suppose. But thence to conclude that Webster was 
not a great statesman, would be seriously to mistake the true function of 
statesmanship. Statesmanship is not innovation — it is conservation. The 
statesman watches the progress of public opinion, and adopts ideas into 
his system as fast as they are ripe and fit to be conserved. If he stimulates 
progress, otherwise than by the prompt, but not too prompt, recognition 
and adoption of the safe results of progress accomplished, he ceases, so far, 
to be a statesman, and becomes a reformer. But the reformer is out of 
place, in the place of the statesman. The Union of these American States 
continued to be, during the whole of Webster's career, a great good not 
yet certainly assured. Besides this, it was a good, such, in its nature, as 
always to be somewhat remote from the popular appreciation. It was, at 
once, a great education to affairs, a valuable lesson in political virtue (and 
political virtue in the last analysis is perhaps nothing more nor less than 
self-control), when the American community should be trained to perceive 
the inestimable worth to them, in every way, of their Federal Union. To 
make this perception a national tradition, required time. Mere continu- 
ance of the government was an indispensable condition. A half century, 
a decade of years, even a single year, was an incalculable gain to the cause 
of the Union. The people of the States, governments and peoples abroad 
must become familiar with the Union as a fact. In comparison with this, 
everything else in American politics was insignificant. While inventive 
and enterprising statesmen in her councils were devising their experiments 
in policy, or were using the strength yet untried of the State as a purchase 
for the accomphshment of moral reforms, the State itself might crumble 
and dissolve, and disappear, under the stress, like a fulcrum of sand. If 
the people, if statesmen themselves, did not see this, why, then, the problem 
of true statesmanship for America did not therefore become the less neces- 
sary, but only the more difficult, to be solved. 

Webster, from his youth, took in the situation with something of 
the ken of a prophet. More. He bore his country on his conscience and 
his heart, in something of the spirit of a father. His hope and his fear for 
the republic were, both of them, in the highest degree, liclpful to save it. 
If his fear had not been balanced by his hope, he would have been an 
augur of ill, contributing all the time to accomplish his own augury, by de- 



95 

pressing the spirit of his countrymen. If his hope had not been balanced 
by his fear, he would have hurried the country on to its destiny, before its 
destiny was ready for it, in the womb of time. This was Seward's mistake. 
Seward seemed not to lack breadth of view and reach of foresight. But 
his temperament was too sanguine. He trusted too much and did not 
sufficiently provide. He was not, like Sumner, chiefly a reformer. But 
he introduced the unmeasured and scarce measurable forces of reform into 
politics before the time. He should have waited for the results of reform, 
finished and safe, and not have ventured to harness the unbridled forces of 
reform, restive, and heady, and plunging, to the delicately balanced and 
already swaying political car. Sumner sought moral ends by political 
means. Seward sought political ends by moral means. Both men erred. 
Seward erred by too much buoyancy of political hope, unballasted with the 
grave sense of political responsibility. " Be it known, then," said Seward, 
in that large oracular way which he affected, speaking in the Senate, on 
the occasion of Clay's death, in 1852 — "be it known, then, and I am sure 
that history will confirm the instruction, that Conservatism was the interest 
of the nation and the responsibihty of its rulers, during the period in which 
he [Clay] flourished." Seward was right in this. He was wrong only in 
assuming that the period of just Conservatism in American politics was 
over. The State was not long enough out of its gristle, to go safely 
through its struggle with the hydra. 

Webster, accordingly, sought to establish the Union by keeping the 
Union estabfished. It needed to grow strong by growing old. Time 
would compact it, if it would only stand, to be compacted by time. Web- 
ster's end was to preserve the Union. His means was, to avert the strain 
that might rend it. If the strain could not be averted, then he at least 
would postpone the strain. To postpone it, might be to avert it. This 
was Webster's statesmanship — its end, and its means. A crisis threatened 
in 1830, again in 1832, once more in 1850, and Webster, each time, 
effected a postponement. Two more postponements, of like length with 
the last, would probably have averted the crisis altogether. It was not to 
be, but, meantime, the republic had grown strong enough to stand the 
inevitable strain. Then 

Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus 
Dardanix 

So it looked, but her strength was proportioned to her days, and Dardania 
survived. 

In 1856, Mr. T. W. Higginson headed the list of signatures to a 
call for a convention to assemble at Worcester, with the ostensible object 
of considering measures for the dissolution of the Union.f The motives 
of the call, no doubt, were conscientious. The subscribers " believed the 
existing Union to be a failure." It was a movement in tlie interest of 
t Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parkgr, vol. ii., pp. 191, ff. 



96 

"humanity" rather than of patriotism — humanity under the form of aboli- 
tion, a cause, however, it is to be presumed, sincerely regarded by the 
signers, as being also, at the moment, the true paramount moral and polit- 
ical interest of the country. Still, the object was probably "humanitarian" 
directly and indirectly patriotic. It is not unlikely, however, that, under- 
neath the ostensible object of the movement was concealed a purpose, not 
dishonorable tliough concealed, to strengthen the radical and progressive 
component, judged by the movers to be disproportionately feeble, in the 
polygon of political forces at that time acting upon the American commun- 
ity. The sentiment of union, it may be supposed, was calculated by these 
gentlemen to be stable enough to bear being made the point of support for 
a pry to help launch the cause of abolition, still hanging, and too long, in 
the ways. I beg to disclaim imputing, by conjecture, any motives not con- 
sistent with honesty on the part of the signers to this call. The motive 
that I have ventured to guess foi them, is one that a philanthropic and, 
subordinately, patriotic man need not be ashmed to confess. It was con- 
sistent with honor, if it did violate wisdom. However these things may 
be, Theodore Parker addressed, on this occasion, to Mr. Higginson a let- 
ter, frankly disavowing any wish on his part to see the Union dissolved. 
He used a homely but apt illustration, to set forth what he believed would 
unquestionably be the result of a conflict, if a conflict should occur, be- 
tween the North and the South. The North, he said in substance, was a 
steer that weighed seventeen millions, and was weak only in the head and 
neck. The South, on the contrary, while strong in these parts, was weak 
in the whole hind-quarters, weighing but eleven millions in all. If the two 
steers should lock horns, it was but a question of avoirdupois v/hich steer 
went into the ditch. 

In this rustic comparison, though its author was not statesman to 
see it, lay the whole secret of wise statesmanship respecting the sectional 
questions in difference between the North and the South. The disparity 
of strength between the two sections was daily increasing. The census 
was in the way of settling the dispute by mere peaceful count of polls and 
dollars. The time was near when a shock of arms, should one occur, be- 
tween the North and the South, would be so inevitably and so obviously 
certain in its issue, that a shock, provoked by the weaker party, would 
never take place. The South saw this, and the hotter-spirited among her 
sons were eager to precipitate a decision. Wise statesmen and patient patri- 
ots had but to wait. In 1850 they waited. Northern extremists and 
Southern extremists were equally disappointed. Tlie compromises of that 
year disgusted both parties alike. So affronted were the extreme party at 
the South, that the Senators of several Southern States (including Virginia) 
issued a solemn protest, which they sought, though vainly, to have spread 
out at large on the records of the Senate, inveighing against the injustice 
to the slave-holding interest involved in the Compromise measures. When 
the extremists in both parties concerned in a measure of mutual settlement 



97 

are dissatisfied together, it is pretty good evidence that neither party has 
got all the advantage. 

There is another aspect of the case, not less important than the one 
already presented. Not only was the North, or, to name the cause in a 
way more accordant with the Websterian spirit, not only was Freedom, 
gaining every moment in ascendency of numbers and strength over Slavery, 
but, what was of at least equal consequence, Freedom was every moment 
gaining in unanimity and steadiness of purpose. In 1850, notwithstanding 
that the argument of avoirdupois was so clearly in favor of Freedom, still 
that apparent advantage was not quite to be trusted. PubHc opinion at 
the North was not yet solid and decisive enough for Freedom. An attempt 
to use the majority would result in dissolving the majority. There can be 
no reasonable doubt that a conflict joined in 1850 would have issued in 
immeasurable disaster, if not in irretrievable ruin, to the cause alike of 
Union, of Freedom, and of Civilization. This, for yet another reason than 
the reasons thus far indicated. 

In an issue joined on the basis of opposition from the North to the 
Compromise measures of 1850, Freedom would have suffered the incalcul- 
able disadvantage of being, technically and substantially, in the wrong. 
There were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of the best and most 
patriotic citizens of the North who could never have been brought to sup- 
port, by war, a construction of the Constitution so palpably against justice 
and common sense as that construction would be which should deny to the 
South the right of recovering fugitive slaves. The men of 1861 saw this 
plainly enough, and hence those joint resolutions, repetitiously, solicitously, 
and even almost humbly, acknowledging this constitutional right of the 
South, which, in specimen at least, my readers have had the opportunity to 
see. The revolt against coercion would have been almost as wide-spread 
at the North as at tne South, if in 1850 the Government had attempted 
coercion, on the principle of refusing to the slave-holding States the meas- 
ure of justice contained in the compromises of that year. Disunion and 
anarchy, and a cycle of unimaginably disastrous history, would have been 
the certain result. 

But not only was it of the utmost moment to the best cause that the 
arbitrament of arms should be postponed till the right side was surely the su- 
perior, and till the right side was also surely and clearly the right ; but it was 
of the utmost moment, besides, that the shock of violent conflict should, if 
possible, be wholly and ultimately avoided and averted. Peace without 
war was inestimably more precious than peace after war, won by means of 
war. There never was a case in which harmony was so needful to har- 
mony. It would have been almost infinitely better for all of us that one 
section should never find out by experiment its own superior or its own 
inferior strength. The mischiefs of such a consciousness, mutually rife be- 
tween the two sections, were already great enough, before they had em- 
bodied and obtruded themselves in a history of brute triumph on tlie one 



98 

side, and of grinding discomfiture on the other, that henceforward could 
not be ignored. Those mischiefs, once so illustrated, became a long entail 
of sequel and tradition, the end and oblivion of which it was, and it is, im- 
possible to forsee. The memory and example will, indeed, always act as a 
terror to intimidate rebellion ; but the same influence will, always, too, act 
as a damp to unsolder harmony, and to cool the ardors of patriotism. Did 
not the statesmanship of Webster and Clay do wisely, to seek the continu- 
ous preservation of the Union, rather than to risk its restoration after the 
chances of disruption by war ? 

As to Webster's correctness of view respecting the necessity of ap- 
plying the Wilmot Proviso to New Mexico and Utah, a word will suffice. 
Ten peaceful years ensued after the organization of these Territories, dur- 
ing which time they were without legal protection against slavery. Within 
those peaceful years the population of New Mexico advanced from 0.29 
(persons to a square mile) in 1850, to 0.36 in i860. During the same 
period Texas advanced from 0.77 to 2.20. The advance here credited to 
New Mexico, small as it may appear, appears, nevertheless, greater than 
it actually was. For, meantime, Colorado and Arizona had been set off 
from her territory, and their percentage of increase was yet smaller than 
hers. Mr. C. F. Adams, accordingly, in 1861, was quite warranted in 
treating the whole question of possible future slavery in New Mexico, to 
use his own term, as purely an " abstraction." He said that more than 
ten years' governmental care of the " bantling " had resulted in introduc- 
ing only twenty-two slaves, of whom ten were non-residents, into the Ter- 
ritory. Webster, then, and Mr. Adams thought alike on this subject. The 
only difference is, that Webster was ten years earlier in expressing his 
opinion. Why, pray should Webster alone continue to be blamed ? Why, 
indeed, should he be blamed at all ? 

But let Webster have been thus conscientious, consistent, patriotic, 
wise, as you maintain, does it follow that he was morally right ? Is there 
not an absolute right and wrong in the world ? And cannot a man find 
something better worth swearing his faith to than country? Is not human- 
ity more than native land? Is not justice greater than statesmanship? 
We thus come to our final topic, the question. 

Did Webster act right 2 

Webster thought that all the chief goods to us as a nation were 
best obtainable through the Union. With the Union and Constitution 
established and preserved, he thought that every other political blessing 
was possible. He foresaw Freedom prevalent at last throughout the nation 
as the peaceful result of the operation of moral forces. Webster never 
thought otherwise than that slavery was a moral, political, social and econ- 
omical evil. He never expected otherwise than that slavery would finally 
disappear from the country. He knew — as who that was exempt from 
the moral and intellectual obliquity incident to practical complication with 
slavery could fail to know? — that the permanent union of free States with 



99 

slave States was impossible. Such a union was like the binding together 
of the living and the dead. But it was evident enough that the forces of 
life were swiftly and surely gaining the ascendant over the forces of death. 
Freedom was winning and slavery was losing every day. And freedom 
was winning more, as slavery was also losing more, while the Union sub- 
sisted, than could be the case on either side if the Union should cease. 
To break up the Union would weaken freedom, and would strengthen 
slavery. The political Abolitionists, of whom Sumner may, without injus- 
tice, be named as representative, seemed to have won a great triumph for 
their cause, when emancipation was proclaimed and effected. But observe 
the conditions under which that apparent triumph was won. It was won 
solely through the force and persistency of the sentiment of union, which 
Daniel Webster, by eminence, had succeeded in instilling into the under- 
standing, and conscience, and heart of the American people. Without 
that sentiment of unioa, the decree of emancipation could never have been 
issued, or, issued, must, perforce, have remained brutum fuhnen — or, less 
respectable still, the empty hghtning of ridiculous demonstration, without 
the accompanying thunderbolt of even a formidable attempt at practical 
enforcement. Webster's statesmanship provided the fulcrum which gave to 
Sumner's reformatory force all the leverage that it had for exerting itself to 
effect the overthrow of slavery. If the fulcrum planted by Webster had 
not stood, Sumner's strength would have gone, simply and only, to split 
the Union, and not in the least to unsettle slavery. Indeed, with the Union 
divided, slavery would have been necessarily more cruel, more resistant, and 
more stable than before. The decree of emancipation, and the fact of 
emancipation, often mistakenly credited to the AboHtionists, were far more 
truly the work of Webster, than the work of the antislavery agitators. 
Emancipation was an incident of the war for the Unioti, as emancipation 
was sure, sooner or later, to have been a peaceful fruit of union, if the war 
had been averted. 

But union, rather than abolition, was the true chief moral, as well as 
political good of this nation, for reasons that may be briefly thus sum- 
marized. Union was the means to ultimate aboHtion, while political abo- 
Htion was the means to ultimate and permanent disunion. If disunion 
could have been secured by any peaceful measures, slavery in the South 
would have remained intact, and have been no less alert and jealous in 
self-defense than before. The two separated republics, supposing two 
republics to have been formed, would have remained in the same local jux- 
taposition. Slaves would have been no less likely to attempt escape. At- 
tempt at recovery would have been as inevitable. There would have been 
an undiminished disposition to resist recapture. The result would have 
been this inexorable alternative, either, first, a treaty stipulation between 
the two republics for extradition of fugitive slaves, and so a fugitive slave 
law in effect, like that which even liberty-loving England, through licr Ad- 
miralty Court, administers to this day; or, secondly, border incursions, and, 



lOO 

by consequence, a chronic state of war. The first branch of the alterna- 
tive would be no gain for freedom, and the second branch would involve 
consequences of bane to every conceivable human interest, not to be con- 
templated as having been escaped, without an outcry of thankfulness ; not 
to be contemplated as imminent, without a shudder of horror. 

Such considerations as these compel us to decide that the course 
which Webster pursued in 1850 was, in the largest view, not merely wise, 
but right — that is, agreeable to the highest and widest morality. 

Respecting, then, Webster's course of public conduct in the matter 
of the compromises of 1850, as it is for this that he still chiefly suffers in 
the popular esteem, so for this, I fully beheve, he deserves our unmingled 
admiration and gratitude. There was some palliation for injustice on the 
part of abolitionists toward Webster, at a time when they passionately be- 
lieved that his vast influence was what chiefly obstructed the progress of 
their cause — as, no doubt it truly was what chiefly obstructed their mis- 
chosen pathway of progress for their cause. It v/as necessary, they instinct- 
ively felt, to destroy Webster's ascendancy over the judgement and con- 
science of the people, before they could hope effectively to further the ends 
which they honestly and ardently held to be first in importance for the 
good of humanity. In the passion of their conviction and zeal, they easily 
thought that Webster really was the criminal man that, accordingly, they 
loudly procloimed him to be. 

But the fight now is fought, and the victory, somehow, has been 
won. In the truce of antislavery strife that has happily succeeded at last, 
and with us become, it may be trusted, a perpetual peace, it is no longer 
excusable if we let the unjust reproach against Webster grow traditional 
and inveterate. 

But this cannot happen. Posterity, at least, will not suffer it. How- 
ever minded still may be the new American nation that now is, the new 
American nation that is soon to be will surely do him justice. His own 
great words come back. They seem chosen for our needs in speaking of 
him. We give the phrase a forward aspect, and we say of Webster, The 
future, at least, is secure. For his renown, is it not of the treasures of the 
whole country ? The tree sent its top high, it spread its branches wide, but 
it cannot fall, for it cast its roots deep. It sunk them clean through the 
globe. No storm, not of force to burst the orb, can overturn it. It cer- 
tainly is not less safe to stand than is the republic itself. Perhaps it is 
safer. 

What he spoke lives, while what was spoken against him perishes, 
and his own speech, in the end, will effectually defend him. Already the 
rage of defamation breaks and disperses itself, vainly beating against that 
monumental rock to his fame. 

"Their surging charges foam themselves away." 

When the storm has fully spent itself, when the fury is quite overpast, the 



lOI 



candid weather will quickly drink up the drench of mist and of cloud that 
still stains it. Then Webster's works will be seen, and the speech of the 
seventh of March among them, standing there, like Mont Blanc, severe 
and serene, to attest, "how silently !" but with none left to gainsay, the 
greatness of the man, the pureness of the patriot. 

But thus far to anticipate, and not to anticipate farther, would be 
scarce half to have guessed the recompense of ackowledgement that surely 
awaits Daniel Webster. History will sit down by and by to meditate his 
words, and, wisely comparing events, make up her final award. She then 
will perceive and proclaim, that, not once, nor twice, in an hour of dark- 
ness for his country, this man, not merely in barren wish and endeavor, but 
in fruitful force and accomplishment as well, stood forth sole, or without 
rival eminent, vindicator and savior of the republic. She will see, and she 
will say, that, especially in 1850, while many clear and pure spirits were 
accepting, amid applause, the glorious bribe of instant enrollment among 
ostensible and confessed defenders of Hberty, one spirit was found — a spirit 
of grave and majestic mold, capable of putting this brilliant lure aside, to 
choose, almost alone, amid obloquy, and scorn, and loss, a different bribe 
— a bribe which turned sternly toward its chooser an obverse of rejection 
for himself, but which bore, concealed from other, less deeply beholding 
eyes than his, a reverse of real eventual rescue for liberty, involved in 
necessary precedent redemption for his country. That chief selected 
spirit's name, history will write in the name of Daniel Webster. Nor will 
she omit to point out that, in thus choosing bravely for country, he did not 
less choose wisely for liberty. 

But history will go farther. She will avouch that not even with 
death did Webster cease being savior to his country. It was Webster 
still, she will say, that saved us yet again in 1861. Illuminating her sober 
page with a picture of that sudden and splendid display of patriotism which 
followed Fort Sumter, she will write under the representation her legend 
and her signature, " This is Daniel Webster." I have pondered his words, 
she will say ; I have studied his life, and this apparition is none other than 
he. Sleeping wakefully even in death for her sake, he hearkened to hear 
the call of his country. He heard it in the guns of Fort Sumter. Resur- 
gent at the sound, that solemn figure once more, and now for the last and 
the sufficing occasion, re-appeared on the scene, standing visibly, during 
four perilous years, relieved, in colossal strength and repose, against her 
dark and troubled sky, the Jupiter Stator of his country. 

For that magnificent popular enthusiasm for the Union — an enthu- 
siasm, the like of which, for blended fury and intelligence enlisted on be- 
half of an idea, the world had never before beheld, this, as history will 
explain, was by no means the birth of a moment. Fort Sumter fired it, 
but it was otherwise fueled and prepared. Daniel Webster, by eminence, 
his whole fife long had been continuously at work. Speech by speech, 
year after year, the great elemental process went on. These men might 



I02 

scoff, and those men might jeer, but none the less, through jeer and scoff, 
the harried Titan kept steadily to his task. Three generations, at least, of 
his countrymen he impregnated, mind and conscience and heart, with the 
sentiment of devotion to the Union. This, in great part, accounts for the 
miracle of eighteen hundred sixty-one. Thus was engendered and 
stored in the American character the matchless spirit of patriotism 
which slept till Fort Sumter, but which, with Fort Sumter, flamed out in 
that sudden, that august, that awful illustration all over the loyal land. 
One flame — who forgets it ? — one flame of indignation and wrath, like a 
joyful sword from its sheath, leaping forth, released at last, from the 
patient but passionate heart of the people ! That monster Union meeting, 
for example, in New York City on the twentieth of April, filling Union 
Square from side to side, and from end to end, with swaying surges of 
people — what was it, history will inquire, but Daniel Webster, come again, 
in endlessly multiplied count, but in scarce augmented volume of personal 
power ? 

Such is certain to be the final sentence of history. And if history 
notes, as she will, that the generous desire of freedom for the slave — a 
desire bond of conscience before, in millions of hearts, but gloriously 
emancipate now, by the welcomed foretokenings of war — if history notes 
that this influence entered to heighten the noble passion of the hour, this 
influence, too, she will gratefully recognize to have been largely a fruit of 
the eloquence of Webster. 

Should some share, perchance, of this confident prediction fail, 
history at least, must decide that, comprehensively surveyed in its rela- 
tion to the whole of his own life, and in its relation to the life of the repub- 
lic, Webster's part in the affairs of eighteen hundred fifty was the part of an 
honest, a consistent, a wise, and an upright patriot and statesman. With 
this measure of justice, let us make late haste to pacify now his indignant 
fame. 



I03 
D 

His tender, mighty heart— v. 

What shall we say of this great man in the personal and private traits 
of his character ? I should say of Mr. Webster that, if there were one 
single trait conspicuous in him and preeminent as compared with others 
who have made for themselves great names in history, it would be the 
abundant charity of his nature. He never assumed for himself in private 
intercourse, or in pubHc speech, any superiority. He never tolerated in 
his presence, and he never practiced, either evil speech or evil surmise. His 
frown followed even their casual introduction about the table and in public 
discussions, and he never tolerated any confusion between intellectual dis- 
section of an argument and moral inculpation of the reasoner." — William 

M. EVARTS. 

" He had accurate perceptions of the qualities and relations of 
things. He overvalued nothing that was common, and undervalued 
nothing that was useful, or even ornamental. His lands, his cattle and 
equipage, his dwelling, library and apparel, his letters, arguments and ora- 
tions — everything that he had, everything that he made, everything that he 
did — were, as far as possible, fit, complete, perfect. 

" He was * * * content with performing all practical duties, 
even in common affairs, in the best possible manner ; and he never chafed 
under petty restraints from those above, nor malicious annoyances from 
those around him. If ever any man had intellectual sovereignty which 
could have excused a want of deference to human authority, or skepticism 
concerning that which was divine, he was such a one. Yet he was, never- 
theless, unassuming and courteous, here and elsewhere, in the public coun- 
cils ; and there was, I think, never a time in his life when he was not an 
unquestioning believer in that religion which offers to the meek the inheri- 
tance of the heavenly kingdom. — William H. Seward. 

That genial warmth of vital temperament — xi 
" After dinner, Mr. Webster would throw himself upon the sofa, and 
then was seen the truly electrical attraction of his character. Every person 
in the room was drawn immediately into his sphere. The children squeezing 
themselves into all possible places and postures upon the sofa, in order to 
be close to him ; Mrs. Webster sitting by his side, and the friend in the 
house, or social visitor, only too happy to join in the circle. All this was 
not from invitation to the children ; he did nothing to amuse them, he 
told them no stories ; it was the irresistible attraction of his character, tlie 
charm of his illumined countenance, from which beamed indulgence and 
kindness to every one of his family. In the evening, if visitors came in, 
Mr. Webster was too much exhausted to take a very active part in con- 
versation. He had done a large amount of work before others wore 
awake in the morning." — Mrs. E. Buckminster Lee, (rrivate Corrcs- 
iiondence, /, 443/ 



I04 



—that affectionate heart, to kindred true — xi. 

" It is the universal testimony that he gave to his parents, in largest 
measure, honor, love, obedience ; that he eagerly appropriated the first 
means which he could command to reHeve his father from the debts con- 
tracted to educate his brother and himself; that he selected his first place 
of professional practice that he might soothe the coming on of his 
old age ; that all through hfe he neglected no occasion — sometimes when 
leaning on the arm of a friend, alone, with faltering voice, sometimes in 
the presence of great assemblies, where the tide of general emotion made 
it graceful — to express his ' affectionate veneration of him who reared and 
defended the log cabin in which his elder brothers and sisters were born, 
against savage violence and destruction, cherished all the domestic virtues 
beneath its roof, and, through the fire and blood of seven years of revolu- 
tionary war, shrank from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice, to serve his coun- 
try, and to raise his children to a better condition than his own.' 

" Equally beautiful was his love of all his kindred, and of all his 
friends. Wnen I hear him accused of selfishness, and a cold, bad na- 
ture, I recall him lying sleepless all night, not without tears of boyhood, 
conferring with Ezekiel how the darhng desire of both hearts should be 
compassed, and he, too, admitted to the precious privileges of education ; 
courageously pleading the cause of both brothers in the morning ; prevail- 
ing by the wise and discerning affection of the mother ; suspending his 
studies of the law, and registering deeds and teaching school to earn the 
means for both, of avaihng themselves of the opportunity which the pa- 
rental self-sacrifice had placed within their reach ; loving him through life, 
mourning him when dead, with a love and sorrow very wonderful, passing 
the sorrow of woman ; I recall the husband, the father of the living and 
of the early departed, the friend, the counsellor of many years, and my 
heart grows too full and liquid for the refutation of words. 

" His affectionate nature, craving ever friendship, as well as the 
presence of kindred blood, diffused itself through all his private life, gave 
sincerity to all his hospitalities, kindness to his eye, warmth to the pressure 
of his hand ; made his greatness and genius unbend themselves to the 
playfulness of childhood, flowed out in graceful memories indulged of the 
past or the dead, of incidents when life was young and promised to be 
happy, — gave generous sketches of his rivals, — the 'high contention now 
hidden by the handful of earth, — liours passed fifty years ago with great 
authors, recalled for the vernal emotions which then they made to live and 
revel in the soul. And from these conversations of friendsliip, no man — 
no man, old or young — went away to remember one word of jjrofaneness, 
one allusion of indelicacy, one impure thought, one unbelieving suggestion, 
one doubt cast on the reality of virtue, of patriotism, of enthusiasm, of the 
progress of man, — one doubt cast on righteousness, or temperance, or 
judgment to come." — Rufus Choate. 



I05 



During the famous log-cabin Presidential canvass of 1840, Webster, 
in a speech addressed to a vast concourse of people at Saratoga Springs, 
made the following allusion to his father and to the circumstances of his 
own early hfe : 

" It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin ; but my elder 
brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin, raised amid the snow-drifts 
of New Hampshire, at a period so early that, when the smoke first rose 
from its rude chimney, and curled over the frozen hills, there was no simi- 
lar evidence of a white man's habitation between it and the settlements on 
the rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist. I make to it an annual visit. 
I carry my children to it, to teach them the hardships endured by the genera- 
tions which have gone before them. I love to dwell on the tender recollec- 
tions, the kindred ties, the early affections, and the touching narratives and 
incidents which mingle with all I know of this primitive family abode. I 
weep to think that none of those who inhabited it are now among the 
living ; and if ever I am ashamed of it, or if I ever fail in affectionate ven- 
eration for him who reared it, and defended it against savage violence 
and destruction, cherished all the domestic virtues beneath its roof, and, 
through the fire and blood of a seven years' revolutionary war, shrunk from 
no danger, no toil, no sacrifice, to serve his country, and to raise his 
children to a condition better than his own, may my name and the name 
of my posterity be blotted for ever from the memory of mankind ! " 

— Works, Vol. II, p. 30. 



It will add nothing to the information, as to facts, already conveyed, 
but it will throw a light on the pecuHar, impressive way, often quasi-poetic, 
Webster had of saying common things, without seeming at all to depart 
from becoming simplicity, if I subjoin the following statement from the 
fragment of autobiography published in the volumes of his Private Corres- 
pondence. This is a charming bit of composition, such as excites un- 
availing regret that we have so little of it. : 

" My father joined this enterprise, [an enterprise of settlement in 
the unsubdued forest,] and about 1764, the exact date is not before me, 
pushed into the wilderness. He had the discretion to take a wife along 
with him, intending whatever else he might want, at least not to lack good 
company. The party travelled out the road, or path, for it was no better, 
sornewhere about Concord or Boscawen ; and they were obliged to make 
their way, not finding one, to their destined places of habitation. My 
father lapped on, a little beyond any other comer, and when he had built 
his log cabin, and lighted his fire, his smoke ascended nearer to the North 
Star than that of any other of his Majesty's New England subjects. His 
nearest civilized neighbor on the north, was at Montreal." 

— Private Correspondence, Vol. I, p. 5. 



io6 



Him his heroic sire, etc., p. 3. — "In this period [the period of 
childhood], also, we are to find the early influences which gave a peculiar 
tinge and fervor to his patriotic feelings — feelings that always carried his 
love of country, by emotions, whose sources lay deep in an emotional 
nature, to the history of what had been done and suffered in order to make 
a country. For we are to remember that at his paternal fireside sat and 
talked, in the long winter evenings, one who had been an actor, first in the 
great war by which our fathers helped the crown of England to extinguish 
the power of France on this continent, and then in that other war for in- 
Qependence, by which the unrequited and misgoverned provinces severed 
themselves from the parent State. ^Vhoeve^ seeks to know what it was in 
the formation of the character of Daniel Webster that gave such a glow to 
the eloquence, and such a breadth to the patriotism of his after-years, 
whenever and wherever American history connected itself with American 
nationality, must go back to that fireside, and fisten in imagination to the 
tales which his young heart drank from his father's lips." 

— Curtis' s Life of Daniel Webster, Vol. I, p. 12. 

Bred in his father's simple school severe, etc , p. 4. — In a long 
letter, full of the writer's private character, written May 3, 1846, from 
Franklin, N. H., the home of his boyhood, to Mr. Blatchford, a valued 
friend, Webster, among other matters of much biographical interest, al- 
ludes as follows to his kindred : 

" Looking out at the east windows at this moment, (2 P. M.) with 
a beautiful sun just breaking out, my eye sweeps a rich and level field of 
one hundred acres. At the end of it, a third of a mile off, I see plain 
marble gravestones, designating the places where repose my father, my 
mother, my brother Joseph, and my sisters Mehitable, Abigail, and Sarah, 
good Scripture names, inherited from their Puritan ancestors. 

" My father, Ebenezer Webster ! born at Kingston, in the lower part 
of the State, in 1739, ^"^ the handsomest man I ever saw, except my 
brother Ezekiel, who appeared to me, and so does he now seem to me, the 
very finest human form that ever I laid eyes on. I saw him in his coffin, 
a white forehead, a tinged cheek, a complexion as clear as heavenly light ! 
But where am I straying ? The grave has closed upon him, as it has on all 
my brothers and sisters. We shall soon be all together. But this is mel- 
ancholy, and I leave it. Dear, dear kindred blood, how I love you all ! 

" This fair field is before me, I could see a lamb on any part of it. 
I have ploughed it, and raked it, and hoed it, but I never mowed it. 
Somehow I could never learn to hang a scythe ! I had not wit enough. 
My brother Joe used to say that my father sent me to college in order to 
make me equal to the rest of the children ! 

" Of a hot day in July, it must have been in one of the last years of 
Washington's administration, I was making hay with my father, just where I 
now see rose a remaining elm tree. About the middle of the afternoon, the 
Honorable Abiel Foster, M. C, who lived in Canterbury, six miles off. called 



lO'J 

at the house, and came into the field to see my father. He was a worthy 
man, college learned, a-nd had been a minister, but was not a person of 
Any considerable natural power. My father was his friend and supporter. 
He talked a while in the field, and went on his way. When he was gone, 
my father called me to him, and we sat down beneath the elm, on a hay- 
cock. He said : ' My son, that is a worthy man, he is a member of Con- 
gress, he goes to Philadelphia, and gets six dollars a day, while I toil here. 
It is because he had an education, which I never had. If I had had his early 
education, I should have been in Philadelphia in his place. I came near 
it as it was, but I missed it, and now I must work here.' ' My dear father,' 
said I, ' you shall not work. Brother and I will work for you, and wear 
our hands out, and you shall rest.' And I remember to have cried, and I 
cry now at the recollection. * * 

" My father died in April, 1 806. I neither left him nor forsook 
him. My opening an office at Boscawen, was that I might be near him. 
I closed his eyes in this very house. He died at sixty-seven years of age, 
after a life of exertion, toil, and exposure j a private soldier, an officer, a leg- 
islator, a judge, everything that a man could be, to whom learning never 
had disclosed her ' ample page.' 

" My first speech at the bar was made when he was on the bench. 
He never heard me a second time. He had in him what I collect to have 
been the character of some of the old Puritans. He was deeply religious, 
but not sour. On the contrary, good-humored, facetious, showing even 
in his age, with a contagious laugh, teeth all as white as alabaster, gentle, 
soft, playful, and yet having a heart in him that he seemed to have bor- 
rowed from a Hon. Pie could frown ; a frown it was ; but cheerfulness, 
good-humor, and smiles composed his most usual aspect." 

— Private Correspondefice, Vol. II, pp. 228-29. 
Simple and pure, * * * 

Eveti to the end, thy grave great son remained — xi. 

My Dear Old Classmate, Roommate and Friend : — It gives me 
very true pleasure to hear from you, aud to learn that you are well. Years 
have not abated my affectionate regard. We have been boys together, 
and men together, and now, are growing old together; but you always 
occupy the same place in my remembrance and good wishes. You are 
still James Hervey Bingham, with your old bass-viol, with " Laus Deo" 
painted upon it ; I hope you have it yet ; and I am the same Daniel Web- 
ster, whom you have known at Exeter, at Lempster, at Charlestown, at 
Salisbury, at Alstead, at Portsmouth, Claremont, Boston and Washington. 
And now, my dear friend, after this retrospective glimpse, let me say that 
I know nothing of those who are coming into power ; that I expect to 
possess no particular influence or association with them ; bi.t that, if any 
occasion arises in which I can be useful to you, you can command my most 
attentive services. 

Will you please give my love to a lady, whom I had once the honor 
of knowing as Miss Charlotte Kent ? Daniel Webster. 

Washington, February 5th, 1849. 



io8 

In 185 1, a schoolmaster of his boyhood addressed a letter to 
Mr. Webster about the times of old, which drew forth the following 
reply, containing a bank-bill for fifty dollars, more, probably, than the 
old gentleman ever received for a winter's teaching in " New Salisbury :" 

Washington, February 26, 1851. 

Master Tappan : I thank you for your letter, and am rejoiced 
to know that you are among the living. I remember you perfectly well 
as a teacher of my infant years. I suppose my mother must have 
taught me to read very early, as I have never been able to recollect the 
time when I could not read the Bible. I think Master Chase was my 
earliest schoolmaster, probably when I was three or four years old. 
Then came Master Tappan. You boarded at our house, and some- 
times, I think, in the family of Mr. Benjamin Sanborn, our neighbor, 
the lame man. Most of those whom you knew in " New Salisbury" 
have gone to their graves. You have indeed lived a checkered life. 
I hope you have been able to bear prosperity with meekness, and 
adversity with patience. These things are all ordered for us far better 
than we could order them for ourselves. We may pray for our daily 
bread ; we may pray for the forgiveness of sins ; we may pray to be 
kept from temptation, and that the kingdom of God may come, in us, 
and in all men, and his will everywhere be done. Beyond this we hardly 
know for what good to supplicate the divine mercy. Our heavenly 
Father knoweth what we have need of better than we know ourselves, 
and we are sure that his eye and his loving-kindness are upon us and 
around us every moment. 

I thank you again, my good old schoolmaster, for your kind 
letter, which has awakened many sleeping recollections ; and, with all 
good wishes, I remain, your friend and pupil, 

Daniel Webster. 

[Here is another and later letter from Mr. Webster to the same 
old schoolmaster, also enclosing a generous remittance of money:] 

Boston, July 20, 1852. 

Master Tappan : I learn with much pleasure, through the 
public press, that you continue to enjoy life, with mental faculties 
bright and vivid, although you have arrived at a very advanced age, 
and are somewhat infirm. I came to-day from the very spot in which 
you taught me; and to me a most delightful spot it is. The river and 
the hills are as beautiful as ever, but the graves of my fatlier and 
mother, and brothers and sisters, and early friends, gave it to me some- 
thing of the appearance of a city of the dead. But let me not repine. 
You have lived long, and my life is already not short, and we have 
both much to be thankful for. Two or three persons are yet living 
who like myself were brought up si/l> tiia ferula. They remember 
" Master Tappan." 

And now, my good old master, receive a renewed tribute of 



I09 . 

affectionate regard from your grateful pupil, with his wishes and 
prayers for your happiness in all that remains to you in this life, and 
more especially for your participation hereafter in the durable riches 
of righteousness. Daniel Webster. 

— Lanman's Private Life of Daniel Webster. 

Late, but full-voiced and penitent, above 
His dust. — xiv. 

" I have, learned by evidence the most direct and satisfactory, that 
in the last months of his life, the whole affectionateness of his nature ; his 
consideration of others ; his gentleness ; his desire to make them happy 
and to see them happy, seemed to come out in more and more beautiful 
and habitual expression than ever before. The long days' public tasks 
were felt to be done ; the cares, the uncertainties, the mental conflicts of 
high place, were ended ; and he came home to recover himself for the few 
years which he still might expect would be his before he would go hence 
to be here no more. And there, I am assured and fully believe, no unbe- 
coming regrets pursued him; no discontent, as for injustice suffered or 
expectations unfulfilled ; no self-reproach for anything done or anything 
omitted by himself; no irritation, no peevishness, unworthy of his noble 
nature ; but instead, love and hope for his country, when she became the 
subject of conversation ; and for all around him, the dearest and most in- 
different, for all breathing things about him, the overflow of the kindest 
heart growing in gentleness and benevolence ; paternal, patriarchal affec- 
tions, seeming to become more natural, warm, and communicative every 
hour. Softer and yet brighter grew the tints on the sky of parting day ; 
and the last Hngering rays, more even than the glories of the noon, an- 
nounced how divine was the source from which they proceeded ; how in- 
capable to be quenched ; how certain to rise on a morning which no night 
should follow. Such a character was made to be loved. It was loved. 
Those who knew and saw it in its hour of calm — those who could repose 
on that soft green — loved him. His plain neighbors loved him ; and one 
said, when he was laid in his grave, ' How lonesome the world seems ! ' 
Educated young men loved him. The ministers of the gospel, the general 
intelligence of the country, the masses afar off, loved him. True, they had 
not found in his speeches, read by millions, so much adulation of the peo- 
ple; so much of the music which robs the public reason of itself; 
so many phrases of philanthropy ; and some had told them he was 
lofty and cold, — solitary in his greatness; but every year they came 
nearer and nearer to him, and as they came nearer, they loved him better ; 
they heard how tender the son had been, the husband, the brother, the 
friend, and neighbor, that he was plain, simple, natural, generous, hospita- 
ble, — the heart larger than the brain ; that he loved little children, and rev- 
erenced God, the Scriptures, the Sabbath-day, the Constitution, and the 
law, — and their hearts clave unto him." — Rufus Choate. 



I lO 



E 



Reverent toward God — iv. 

An acquaintance of more than twenty-five years has enabled me to 
form some just idea of the departed. I have always regarded him as a 
Christian man, and the fact is singular, though melancholy, that many who 
were his malignant revilers in life, acknowledged his excellence at death. 
I rest my cheerful conviction of his piety upon personal knowledge. I 
fully unite with the Rev. Mr. Alden, in his opinion expressed in his funeral 
oration, that the delineation which Mr. Webster gave of one of his early 
and noble compeers " could never have been written, except from an ex- 
perimental acquaintance with that which he holds up as the chief excel- 
lence of his friend." 

Such a man could not be reckless or thoughtless, and they who 
knew him best, knew that God was in all his thoughts ; the God of nature 
in his works filling him with the loftiest admiration, the God of Providence 
ordering all his daily steps, and the God of grace speaking to him in the 
volume of a father's love. 

Many years ago — 1834 — in passing through the Sound, we occupied 
the captain's stateroom. At night Mr. Webster took up my Bible and read 
the 23d Psalm, and then made some fine remarks upon the character of 
David, observing that the varied experience of David as a shepherd boy — 
a king, victorious and vanquished, had made him acquainted with all the 
diversified feelings of human nature ; and had thus qualified him to be the 
chorister of the church in all future ages. After this, he asked me to 
commend ourselves to God, remarking that none needed prayer more than 
the "wayfaring man," That evening I asked Mr. Webster if his religious 
views were those of the Orthodox Congregationalists, with whom I had 
heard that he had united in early life. " Yes," he said, " he thought that 
he had never changed his religious opinions ; that he regarded Jonathan 
Edwards as bearing the stamp of truth as nearly as any mere human 
writer." He spoke of his History of Redemption as having greatly in- 
terested him, and added, "but I prefer to find truth as it is conveyed to 
us in the Word, without system, yet so clear and lucid." In regard to the 
atonement, he expressed the most abiding confidence, observing that it 
seemed to him the great peculiarity of the Gospel, to deny which was to 
reduce it to a level with other systems of religion. He observed that he 
had " no taste for metaphysical refinement in theologv, and preferred 
plain statements of truth." He thought the pulpit had much to answer 
for in producing difference of opinion among Christians, and expressed his 
belief that the best and safest way to oppose all sorts of error was the plain 
enunciation of the truth. In this conversation I was much impressed with 
the remark, " I take the Bible to be inspired, and it must not be treated 
as thougli it merely contained a revelation ; it is a revelation," 



Ill 



" You ministers make a great mistake in not dwelling more upon 
the gresit/acfs of Christianity. They are the foundations of the system, and 
there is a power connected with their statement. It seems to me that Peter 
and Paul understood this. Plain preaching is what we all want, and as 
much illustration as you can bring up. I once heard Dr. Beecher, in 
Hanover street, Boston, talk for an hour on God's law, in its application 
to the heart and life; he did it, in my idea of good preaching." * * * 

Last February I dined with Mr. Webster in New York, upon the 
Sabbath day. He had been hearing Dr. Hawks, and spoke in commen- 
dation of the earnestness of the discourse, and pointing across the Park to 
the Brick Church, said, " There I always hear capital sermons from Dr. 
Spring — always full of strong sense and simple piety." — Rev, J. A. Choules, 
D. D. 

Greater— for good and great — ii. 

By way of showing the character of some of his fees while practic- 
ing law at Portsmouth, the following incident is worth recording : One of 
his clients, after gaining a certain suit, found himself unable to raise the 
necessary funds to pay his lawyer, and therefore insisted upon deeding to 
him a piece of land in a neighboring county. And so the matter rested 
for many years. Happening to be on a visit to this county at a subse- 
quent period, he hunted out this land, and found an old woman living 
upon it alone, in an old house situated among rocks. He questioned the 
woman about the farm, and learned that it was the property of a lawyer 
named Webster, and that she was daily expecting him to come on and 
turn her out of doors. Whereupon he made himself known as the pro- 
prietor, gave her a word of consolation, with a present of fifty dollars, broke 
bread with her at her humble board, and took his departure. From that 
time to the present the place has been known as " Webster's Farm," and 
it is beheved that up to the day of his death the idea of this possession 
had never entered his mind. — Charles Lanman. 

It was generally admitted before the death of Mr. Webster that 
he was the foremost lawyer, statesman, diplomatist, and orator m the land. 
But the truth is, Daniel Webster, in the judgment of those who knew him 
best, was as good as he was great. Nor was he a mere theorist in religion. 
He was a practical Christian, eminently thoughtful upon God, upon His 
works, and His word; and the clergyman whose preaching and life met 
the approval of his judgment and conscience might feel quite sure that he 
was doing the work of his Master. 

A gentleman who was present on one occasion at a dinner party at 
the Astor House, given to a few of Mr. Webster's New York friends, 
relates an incident which took place at the table, in which Mr. Webster 
earnestly avowed his deep religious convictions. It was when he was 
Secretary of State. 



112 



"There were twenty or so at the table. Mr. Webster seemed 
wearied by his journey, and speaking but Uttle, if at all, plunged into a 
darksome sort of reverie, not well calculated to enliven his friends. This 
at length became so apparent, and the situation so unpleasant, that one 
of the company urged upon a distinguished man present, a warm friend of 
Mr. Webster, to get him into conversation. It was thought he only needed 
to be jogged, to become as lively as they wished. 

" This friend consented, and spoke to Mr. Webster, asking him 
some question that in ordinary circumstances and with ordinary men 
would have led to conversation ; but it failed in the present case. The 
dark Secretary of State merely raised his head and answered simply, and 
crept into his cave again. 

" Again the gentleman, frightened by his failure, was urged to renew 
the attempt to draw him out. He summoned courage and said to Mr. 
Webster : 

" 'Mr. Webster, I want you to tell me what was the most impor- 
tant thought that ever occupied your mind ? 

" Here was a thumper for him, and so everybody thought at the 
table. Mr. Webster slowly passed his hand over his forehead, and in a 
low tone said to a friend near him : 

" ' Is there any one here who does not know me ?' 

" ' No, sir, they all know you — are all your friends.' 

" Then he looked over the table, and you may well imagine how 
the tones of his voice would sound on such an occasion, giving answer to 
such a question. 

" ' The most important thought that ever occuiped my mind,' said 
he, * was that of my individual responsibihty to God !' — upon which, for 
twenty minutes, he spoke to them, and when he had finished he rose from 
the table and retired to his room. 

The rest of the company, without a word, went into an adjoining 
parlor, and when they had gathered there some of them exclaimed, 'Who 
ever heard of anything like that ?' What Mr. Webster said in advocacy of 
his sublime thought I do not know ; no one ever repeated it, and I pre- 
sume no one ever will" 

" He was punctual in his attendance upon public worship, and ever 
opened his school with prayer. I never heard hun use a profane word, 
and never saw him lose his temper." — Rev. Samuel Osgood to Professor 
Sanborn. — Private Correspondence^ I., p. 58. 

" He was never known to swear, or use any profanity of speech." 

Theodore Parker's Discourse of Webster. 



113 



Considering by whose hand — ix. 

A Boston Editor, under date near the time of Webster's death, 1852, 
says : " It was our fortune to pass several days at his home in Marshfield, 
some six or eight years ago, and well we remember one beautiful night 
when the heavens seemed to be studded with countless myriads of stars, 
that about nine o'clock in the evening we walked out, and he stood be- 
neath the beautiful weeping elm which raises its majestic form within a few 
paces of his dweUing, and looking up through the leafy branches, he ap- 
peared for several minutes to be wrapped in deep thought, and at length, as 
if the scene, so soft and beautiful, had suggested the Imes, he quoted cer- 
tain verses of the Eighth Psalm, beginning with the words, ' When I con- 
sider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers ; the moon and the stars which 
thou hast ordained : what is man, that thou art mindful of him ? and the 
son of man, that thou visitest him ? For thou hast made him a Httle 
lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor,' etc. 
The deep, low tone in which he repeated these inspired words, and the 
rapt attention with which he gazed up through the branches of the elm, 
struck us with a feeling of awe and solemnity. We remained out be- 
neath the tree for over an hour, and all the time he conversed about the 
Scriptures, which no man has studied with greater attention, and of which no 
man whom we ever saw knew so much or appeared to understand and ap- 
preciate so well." 



" I recollect an incid'ent which showed his scrupulous integrity. Mr. 
Thompson was postmaster in Salisbury, while I was in his office. In his 
absence I had the entire charge of it. One day 1 found a letter on the 
desk, addressed to his brother Ezekiel, at Hanover, marked as a double 
one. When I took it up to mail it, knowing the superscription to be 
Daniel's, I said to him, if you had not marked it double, I never should 
have suspected that it was so. ' I thought as much,' said he, ' but I re- 
membered to have read somewhere, that it is better to be honest than to 
appear so.' At this time, two pieces of paper, however small, constituted 
a double letter, with double postage, which to Hanover was twenty cents, 
which he paid. The letter contained only a twenty dollar bill, he was 
sending to his brother. This was done when money was very scarce with 
him." — Mr. Abbot to Prok. Sanborn. 

" The remarkable equanimity of temper which he ever manifested 
in school was a matter of common observation. Under all the vexations 
incident to such a scliool, not a frown was ever seen ujion his brow. It was 
his invariable practice to open and close the school with extemporaneous 
prayer; and I shall never forget the solemnity of manner with which that 
duty was always i)erformcd." — Mr. Hiix to Professor Sanborn. Pri- 
vate Correspondence, I., p. 48. 



114 



DANIEL WEBSTER AND JOHN COLBY. 



The year before Mr. Webster died, in the autumn of 1851, I was 
spending a few weeks with him at his place in Franklin. One pleasant 
morning he said to me : 

" I am going to take a drive up to Andover, and I want you to go 
with me. * * * When we get into the wagon I will tell you whom I 
am going to see. * * * The horse was harnessed and we started off. 
As we rode along, Mr. Webster had a great many reminiscences called to 
mind by different objects that we passed ; such a man used to live here, he 
would say, and such a man lived in such a house, and there I remember 
such a man lived, and here he used himself to live when a boy, and there 
he used to pitch quoits, and youthful Mr. Webster used to play with 
John Holden's boys. * * * After Mr. Webster had recited many 
pleasant incidents of this kind, he said: 

" Now I will tell you the object of this trip to-day. I am going to 
see a man by the name of Colby. John Colby is a brother-in-law of mine. 
He married my oldest half-sister, and was, of course, a good many years 
older than myself, as she was. I have not seen him for forty-five years, 
as nearly as I can recollect. 

" My sister, his wife, has been dead many, many years; and any in- 
terest I may have had in John Colby has all died out ; but I have learned 
some particulars about his recent life that interest me very much, and I 
am going to see him. I will tell you something about him. When I was 
a lad at home, on the farm, John Colby was a smart, driving, trading, 
swearing yeoman, money loving and money getting. In that rather rude 
period, when there were not many distinctions in society, when one man 
was about as good as another, and when there were very few educated 
persons, he was considered a very smart, active man. I remember him, 
however, with a sort of terror and shudder. He would pick me up when 
I was a little fellow, throw me astride of a horse's bare back, and send the 
horse to the brook. The horse would gallop, and I had to hold on to his 
mane'^to keep from being pitched into the river. Colby was a reckless, 
wild, harum-scarum, dare-devil sort of a fellow. Well, John Colby mar- 
ried my oldest half-sister. She was a religious, good woman ; but beaux 
were not plenty, and John Colby was a fine looking man. His personal 
habits were good enough, laying aside his recklessness ; he was not a 
drinking man, and he was, as the world goes, a thrifty man. Any of the 
girls in town would have married John Colby. After he married my sis- 
ter, I went away to college, and lost sight of him. Finally, he went up to 
Andover and bought a farm ; and the only recollection I have about him 
after that is, that he was called, I think, the wickedest man in the neigh- 
borhood, so far as swearing and impiety went. I used to wonder how my 
sister could marry so profane a man as John Colby. I think she herself 
was very much shocked ; and I know her father was, who was a religious 
man. And still Colby was considered ' a good catch.' I came home from 



115 



college during vacation, and used to hear of him occasionally ; but after 
a few years — perhaps five or six years — my sister died, and then, of course, 
all the interest that any of us had in John Colby pretty much ceased. I 
believe she left a child — I think a daughter — who grew up and was mar- 
ried, and also left a child. 

" Now I will give you the reason why I am to-day going up to see 
this John Colby. I have been told by persons who know, that within a 
few years he has become a convert to the Christian religion, and has met 
with that mysterious change which we call a change of heart ; in other 
words, he has become a constant, praying Christian. 

" This has given me a very strong desire to have a personal inter- 
view with him, and to hear with my own ears his account of this change. 
For, humanly speaking, I should have said that this was about as hopeless 
a case for conversion as I could well conceive. He won't know me, and 
I shall not know him ; and I don't intend to make myself known at first." 

We drove on, and reached the village — a little, quiet place, one 
street running through it, a few houses scattered along here and there, 
with a country store, a tavern, and a post-office. As we drove into this 
quiet, peaceable httle hamlet, at midday, with hardly a sign of life notice- 
able, Mr. Webster accosted a lad in the street, and asked where John 
Colby lived. 

" That is John Colby's house," said he, pointing to a very com- 
fortable two-story house, with a green lawn running down to the road. 
We drove along towards it, and a little before we reached it, making our 
horse secure, we left the wagon and proceeded to the house on foot. In- 
stead of steps leading to it, there were Httle flagstones laid in front of the 
door ; and you could pass right into the house without having to step up. 
The door was open. There was no occasion to knock, because as we ap- 
proached the door the inmates of the room could see us. Sitting in the 
middle of that room was a striking figure, who proved to be John Colby. 
He sat facing the door, in a very comfortably furnished farm-house room, 
with a httle table, or what would perhaps be called a light-stand, before 
him. Upon it was a large old-fashioned Scott's Family Bible, in very large 
print, and of course a heavy volume. 

It lay open, and he had evidently been reading it attentively. As 
we entered, he took off his spectacles, and laid them upon the page of the 
book, and looked up at us as we approached, Mr. Webster in front. He 
was a man, I should think, over six feet in height, and he retained in a 
wonderful degree his erect and manly form, although he was eighty-five or 
six years old. 

His frame was that of a once powerful athletic man. His head was 
covered with very heavy, thick, busiiy hair, and it was white as wool, which 
added very much to the picturesqueness of his appearance. As I looked 
in at the door, I thought I never saw a more striking figure. He straight- 
ened himself up, but said nothing until just as we appeared at tlie door, 



ii6 



when he greeted us with — 

" Walk in, gentlemen." 

He then spoke to his grandchild to give us some chairs. The 
meeting was, I saw, a little awkward, and he looked very sharply at us, as 
much as to say, " You are here, but for what I don't know ; make known 
your business." Mr. Webster's first salutation was — 

"This is Mr. Colby, Mr. John Colby, is it not ?" 

"That is my name, sir," was the reply. 

" I suppose you don't know me," said Mr. Webster. 

" No, sir, 1 don't know you ; and I should hke to know how you 
know me." 

"I have seen you before, Mr. Colby," rephed Mr. Webster. 

" Seen me before !" said he, " pray, when and where ?" 

" Have you no recollection of me ?" asked Mr. AVebster. 

" No, sir, not the slightest," and he looked by Mr. Webster toward 
me, as if trying to remember if he had seen me. Mr. Webster re- 
marked — 

" I think you never saw this gentleman before ; but you have seen 
me." 

Colby put the question again, when and where ? 

" You married my oldest sister," repUed Mr. Webster, caUingherby 
name. (I think it was Susanna). 

" I married your oldest sister !" exclaimed Colby ; " who are 
you?" 

" I am httle Dan," was the reply. 

It would certainly he impossible to describe the expression of 
wonder, astonishment, and half-increduHty that came over Colby's face. 

" You Daniel Webster !" said he; and he started to rise from his 
chair. As he did so, he stammered out some words of surprise. " Is it 
possible that this is the little black lad that used to ride the horse to water ? 
Well, I cannot realize it !" 

Mr. Webster approached him. They embraced each other ; and 
both wept. 

" Is it possible," said Mr. Colby, when the embarrassment of the 
first shock of recognition was past, " that you have come up here to see 
me ? Is this Daniel ? Why, why," said he, " I cannot believe my senses. 
Now, sit down. I am glad, oh, I am so glad to see you, Daniel ! I never 
expected to see you again. I don't know what to say. I am so glad," he 
went on, " now that my life has been spared that I might see you. Why, 
Daniel, I read about you, and hear about you in all ways ; sometimes 
some members of the family come and tell us about you ; and the news- 
papers tell us a great deal about you, too. Your name seems to be con- 
stantly in the newspapers. They say that you are a great man, that you 
are a famous man ; and you can't tell how delighted I am when I hear 
sucli things. But, Daniel, the time is short — you won't stay here long — ■ 



ii; 



I want to ask you one important question. You may be a great man ; are 
you a good man ? Are you a Christian man ? Do you love the Lord 
Jesus Christ ? that is the only question that is worth asking or answering. 
Are you a Christian ? You know, Daniel, what -I have been. I have been 
one of the wickedest of men. Your poor sister, who is now in heaven, 
knows that. But the spirit of Christ and of Almighty God has come down 
and plucked me as a brand from the everlasting burning. I am here now, 
a monument to His grace. O, Daniel, 1 would not give what is con- 
tained within the covers of this book for all the honors that have been con- 
ferred upon men from the creation of the world until now. For what 
good would it do ? It is all nothing, and less than nothing, if you are not 
a Christian, if you are not repentant. If you do not love the Lord Jesus 
Christ in sincerity and truth, all your worldly honors will sink to utter 
nothingness. Are you a Christian ? Do you love Christ ? You have 
not answered me." 

All this was said in the most earnest, and even vehement manner. 

" John Colby," replied Mr. Webster, " you have asked me a very im- 
portant question, and one which should not be answered lightly. I intend 
to give you an answer, and one that is truthful, or I won't give you any. I 
hope that I am a Christian. I profess to be a Christian. But, while I 
say that, I wish to add — and I say it with shame and confusion of face 
— that I am not such a Christian as I wish I were. I have lived in the 
world, surrounded by its temptations ; and I am afraid, John Colby, that 
I am not so good a Christian as I ought to be. I am afraid I have not 
your faith and your hopes ; but still, I hope and trust that I am a Chris- 
tian, and that the same grace which has converted you, and made you an 
heir of salvation, will do the same for me. I trust it ; and I also trust, 
John Colby — and it won't be long before our summons will come — that 
we shall meet in a better world, and meet those who have gone before us, 
whom we knew,and who trusted in that same divine free grace. It won't be 
long. You cannot tell, John Colby, how much delight it gave me to hear 
of your conversion. The hearing of that is what has led me here to-day. 
I came here to see with my own eyes, and hear with my own ears, the story 
from a man that I knew and remember well. What a wicked man you 
used to be !" 

"O Daniel!" exclaimed John Colby, "you don't remember how 
wicked I was ; how ungrateful I was ; how unthankful I was. I never 
thought of God; I never cared for God; I was worse than a heathen. 
Living in a Christian land, with the light shining all around me, and the 
blessings of Sabbath teachings everywhere about me, I was worse than a 
heathen until I was arrested by the grace of Christ, and made to see my 
sinfulness and to hear the voice of my Saviour. Now I am only waiting 
to go home to Ilim, and to meet your sainted sister, my poor wife, and I 
wish, Daniel, that you may be a jjraycrful Christian, and I trust you are. 
Daniel," he added, with deep earnestness of voice, "?<:'/// you pray with 
me?" 



ii8 



We knelt down, and Mr. Webster offered a most touching and 
eloquent prayer. As soon as he had pronounced the " amen," Mr. Colby 
followed in a most pathetic, stirring appeal to God. He prayed for the 
family, for me, and for everybody. Then we rose ; and he seemed to 
feel a serene happiness in having thus joined his spirit with that of Mr. 
Webster in prayer. 

" Now," said he, " what can we give you ? I don't think we have 
anything that we can give you." 

" Yes, you have," replied Mr. Webster ; " you have something that 
is just what we want to eat." 

" What is that," asked Colby. 

" It is some bread and milk," said Mr. Webster. " I want a bowl 
of bread and milk for myself and my friend." 

Very soon the table was set, and a white cloth spread over it ; 
some nice bread was set upon it, and some milk brought, and we sat down 
to the table and ate. 

Mr. Webster exclaimed afterward : " Didn't it taste good ? Didn't 
it taste hke old times ?" 

The brothers-in law soon took an affectionate leave of each other, 
and we left. Mr. Webster could hardly restrain his tears. When we got 
into the wagon he began to moralize. 

" I should like," said he, "to know what the enemies of religion 
would say to John Colby's conversion. There was a man as unlikely to 
become a Christian as any man I ever saw. He was reckless, heedless, 
impious ; never attended church, never experienced the good influence of 
associating with religious people. And here he has been Hving on in that 
reckless way until he has got to be an old man ; until a period of life when 
you naturally would not expect his habits to change, and yet he has been 
brought into the condition in which we have seen him to-day — a penitent, 
trusting, humble believer. Whatever people may say, nothing," added 
Mr. Webster, " can convince me that anything short of the grace of Al- 
mighty God could make such a change as I, with my own eyes, have wit- 
nessed in the life of John Colby." 

" When we got back to Franklin, in the evening, we met John 
Taylor at the door. Mr. Webster called out to him : 

" Well, John Taylor, miracles will happen in these days as well as 
in the days of old.' 

" What now. Squire ?" asked John Taylor. 

"Why, John Colby has become a Christian. If that is not a 
miracle, what is ?" — Harvey's Reminiscences. 

And there is one element of his character which must never be 
forgotten. I mean liis deep religious faith and trust. ... I have 
been with him on the most solemn occasions, in Boston and at Washing- 
ton, in the midst of the most exciting and painful controversies, kneel- 
ing by his side at the table of our common Master, and witnessing 
the humility and reverence of his worship. — Robert C. Winthrop. 



119 



Extract from a communication in the Tribune of about the date 
of Webster's dearti, headed " Mr. Webster's Tenderness of Soul :" 

Mr. Webster and my husband became acquainted in early life, 
and the friendship of youth extended to riper years. [The somewhat 
lengthy narrative goes on to relate that this lady's husband, after having 
lost largely in business, fell dangerously ill. Her oldest child had 
just died, and while her husband lay sick her only remaining child was 
taken away. All the while she was tormented by an importunate 
creditor, who demanded the house. This man had now just left her.] 
At that moment I heard a rap at the door. I could not rise to obey 
the summons. I felt that my heart was breaking. But the door 
slowly opened, and Mr. Webster stood before me. He had come home 
on a visit, and without knowing anything of our sorrows, he rode over 
to see and embrace his early friend. What was his surprise to find him 
thus ! And when the story of our troubles had been told, when he had 
assured himself that his long-cherished friend had but a few hours to 
live, he sat down and wept. 

Then he asked to see the corpse of his little pet, who, when he 
last visited us, sat upon his knee and played with his watch. As he 
rose to leave the bed, my husband said in a whisper, " Fetch her to me, 
that I too may look upon that sweet face once more." 

We placed the still beautiful form beside the bed, and, standing 
near it, gave ourselves up to uncontrollable grief. When able to com- 
mand his voice, Mr. W. said, " Let us pray." And kneeling there, 
beside the dying and the dead, he prayed as none but a Christian can 
pray. 

Before Mr. Webster left, the assurance had been given that the 
widow should be provided for in her affliction. 

My husband died the next day. I saw no more of the hard- 
hearted creditor, and the house remained unsold. I still occupy it, 
and the room where Mr. Webster kneeled in prayer is to me a sacred 
place. 

Mr. Webster to Mrs. Lee. 

Boston, May 8, 1848. 

I thank you, my dear friend, for your sympathy with us under 
our most severe afflictions; I did not look for these calamities, but 1 
pray for a submissive and reconciled spirit. I know that I must follow 
my lost children soon; and that we must all be diligently preparing 
for an exchange of worlds. 

A great portion of my life, my dear friend, has been passed with 
you near me. Poor Grace, who died in your arms ! Twice within the 
week I have looked upon her coffin, and there lies her mother who 
loved you like a sister ; and there lies dear little Charles. The mother 
and four out of five of lier children arc already in the same tomb. May 
God enable nie to sustain these overwhelming sorrows, and still always 
to bless his most holy name ! 



I20 

Nor served thee not that large bucolic life — ix, 
MR. WEBSTER ON FARMING. 

During a meeting of the United States Agricultural Society in 
Washington several of the delegates called on Mr. Webster. He received 
them very cordially in his dining-hall, and after shaking hands with the 
company addressed them as follows: 

" General Wilder and gentlemen of the United States Agricultural 
Society, I am happy to see you, one and all. Brother farmers, you do 
me no more than justice when you call me the ' Farmer of Marshfield.' 
My father was a farmer and I am a farmer. When a boy among my na- 
tive hills of New Hampshire, no cock crew so early that I did not hear 
him, and no boy ran with more avidity to do errands at the bidding of the 
workmen than I did. 

" You are engaged in a noble enterprise. The prosperity and glory 
of the Union are based on the achievements of agriculture. Gentlemen, I 
will say to you what I have never before said, that when, forty-five years ago, 
I was called to Dartmouth College to pass my second graduation, I 
attempted, in my humble manner, to speak cf the agricultural resources of 
the country, and to recommend for their fuller development, organized 
action and the formation of agricultural societies ; and, if memory does 
not betray me, it was about this period of time that the first agricultural 
societies in this country were formed in old Berksline and Philadelphia ; 
[loud cheers by the delegates from Pennsylvania and Massachussetts ;] 
and though I have never seen that unimportant production since that day, 
the partiality of any of my curious friends [bowing and laughing] may be 
gratified by exploring amongst the slumbering archives of Marshfield. 
When, some thirty years ago, I went to Marshfield, some of my kind 
neighbors would call to inquire the state of politics in the South, and 
others to know a bit of law from ' the Squire.' I told them, ' I have 
come to reside among you as a farmer, and here I talk neither poHtics nor 
law.' Gentlemen, I am naturally a farmer ; I am most ardently attached 
to agricultural pursuits ; and though I cultivate my land with some httle 
care, yet, from the sterility of the soil, or from neglected husbandry on my 
part, in consequence of my public engagements, they afford no subsistence 
to myself and family. To you, farmers of the West and Soutli, the soil of 
Marshfield may look barren and unfruitful. Sometimes the breezes of the 
broad Atlantic fan it ; sometimes, indeed, unkindly suns smite it. But I 
love its quiet shades, and there I love to commune with you upon the 
ennobling pursuits in which we are so happily engaged. Gentlemen, I 
thank you for this visit with which you have honored me. My interests 
and my sympathies are identified with yours. I shall remember you and 
this occasion which has called you together. I invoke for you a safe 
return to your homes. I invoke for you an abundant harvest, and if we 
meet not again in time, I trust that hereafter we shall meet in a more 
genial clime and under a kindlier sun. Brother farmers, I bid you good 
morning." 



121 



In 1825, the inhabitants of Plymouth county knew nothing of kelp 
and sea-weed as articles that would enrich their lands ; but Mr. Webster 
discovered their value, set the example of using them, profited thereby, 
and they are now considered so indispensable that some of the farmers in 
the country will team it a distance of thirty miles. Principally at his own 
expense, Mr. Webster laid out a road to the beach on which the kelp was 
thrown by the sea ; and not a single ton of the article is known to have 
been drawn on land before he went to Marshfield. In October of last 
year, one hundred and fifty teams were employed after a storm in drawing 
this rich manure on to the estates adjoining Marshfield, exclusive of those 
engaged by Mr. Porter Wright. And some of Mr. Webster's neighbors 
allege that they could well afford to give him five tons of hay a year for 
having taught them the use of ocean manure. — Charles Lanman, 

I/is noble simple ways — ix. 
MR. WEBSTER TO JOHN TAYLOR. 

Washington, March 13, 1852. 
John Taylor : — I am glad to hear from you again, and to learn 
that you are all well, and that your teams and tools are ready for spring's 
work, whenever the weather will allow you to begin. I sometimes read 
books on farming, and I remember that a very old author advises farmers 
" to plow naked, and to sow naked." By this he means that there is no 
use in beginning spring's work till the weather is warm, that a farmer may 
throw aside his winter clothes, and roll up his sleeves. Yet he says we 
ought to begin as early in the year as possible. He wrote some very 
pretty verses on the subject, which, as far as I remember, run thus — 

" While yet the spring is young, while earth unbinds 
Her frozen bosom to the western winds ; 
While mountain snows dissolve against the sun, 
And streams, yet new, from precipices run, 
E'en in this early dawning of the year. 
Produce the plough, and yoke the sturdy steer. 
And goad him, till he smoke beneath his toil, 
And the bright share is buried in the soil." 

John Taylor, when you read these lines do you not see the snow 
melting, and the little streams beginning to run down the southern slopes 
of your Punch Brook pasture, and the new grass starting and growing in 
the trickling water, all green and bright and beautiful? And do you not 
see your Durham oxen smoking from heat and perspiration, as they draw 
along your great breaking up plough, cutting and turning over tiie tough 
sward in your meadow, in the great field ? 

The name of this sensible author is Virgil, and he gives farmers 
much other advice, some of which you have been following all this 
winter, without ever knowing that he had given it : 



122 



" But when cold weather, heavy snows and ram 
The laboring farmer in his house restrain, 
Let him forecast his work with timely care, 
Which else is huddled when the skies are fair ; 
Then let him mark the sheep, and whet the shining share. 
Or hollow trees for boats, or number o'er 
His sacks or measure his increasing store ; 
Or sharpen stakes, and mend each rack and fork ; 
So to be ready, in good time to work. 
Visit his crowded barns, at early morn. 
Look to his granary and shell his corn ; 
Give a good breakfast to his numerous kine. 
His shivering poultry and his fattening swine."* 

And Mr. Virgil says some other things, which you understand up 
at Franklin as well as ever he did : 

" In chilling winter, swains enjoy their store. 
Forget their hardships, and recruit for more ; 
The farmer to full feasts invites his friends. 
And what he got with pains, with pleasure spends; 
Draws chairs around the fire, and tells once more 
Stories which often have been told before ; 
Spreads a clean table with things good to eat. 
And adds some moistening to his fruit and meat ; 
They praise his hospitality, and feel 
They shall sleep better after such a meal." f 

John Taylor, by the time you have got through this, you will have 
read enough. 

The sum of all is, be ready for your spring's work, as soon as the 
weather is warm enough. 

And then, put in the plough, and turn not back. 

Daniel Webster. 

* Dryden's Virgil, Georg I., 350, considerably altered to fit it to the meridian of 
Franklin. 

f Dryden's Virgil, Georg I., 404. The last six lines are in playful imitation of 
the original. 



He was in the constant habit of reading the Scriptures and 
attending to private devotion, and on every Sabbath morning he called 
all his family domestics around him. He read and explained to them 
the Scriptures and led in prayer. Some four Sabbaths ago was the 
last time he attended to this duty. — Rev. Mr. Davis, reporting Mr. 
Abbott. 













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